Suffolk Councillor – New Build Homes Must Support Superfast Broadband

Suffolk’s Deputy County Council Leader, Christopher Hudson, has called on the local authority to consider making it a requirement of the planning process for property developers to ensure that their new build homes support superfast broadband connectivity.

A number of local authorities (e.g. Cheltenham’s planning changes) have already adopted similar measures and the Government has also called on councils across the United Kingdom to consider the need for superfast broadband when judging future planning applications (here).

Most recently BT (Openreach) and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) have also agreed to a new deal that aims to deliver “fibre based” (FTTC/P) superfast or ultrafast broadband connectivity into new build properties across the United Kingdom (details here and here). Never the less Hudson still wants broadband to be reflected as part of future housing proposals.

Christopher Hudson said (East Anglian Daily Times):

“I want to urge developers to ensure they put it into their plans. It’s something we ought to take on board at strategic level at county and district councils – and we need an understanding from the commercial side.

It should be part of the package for [property developers] to be broadband compliant. We have an energy supply in our homes as standard, but broadband is ignored. In the future it should be an essential service.”

It’s worth pointing out that forthcoming European policy will soon require “All new buildings – and those undergoing major renovation – for which applications for building permission have been submitted after 31 December 2016 must be high-speed ready” (here).

However it should be said that most of these policies don’t specifically spell out what sort of performance (speed) the service should deliver and some property developers have warned that imposing too many new requirements might discourage new applications, especially if the development is only very small and or it exists in a rural area where local connectivity has not yet been upgraded.