Devon Council Criticised for Secrecy of Broadband Project’s Scrutiny Meetings

The Upottery Parish Councillor and Chairman of the B4RDS (Broadband for Rural Devon & Somerset) campaign, Graham Long, has criticised Devon Council for conducting scrutiny of the regional broadband roll-out project (Connecting Devon and Somerset) in private, with “press and public excluded“.

The CDS scheme is the largest of all the state aid fuelled Broadband Delivery UK programmes in England, although at the same time it also reflects one of the country’s most rural and thus challenging regions in terms of deploying new broadband infrastructure.

The Devon and Somerset project is split up into two phases. The original £94m Phase One project involved working with BT (Openreach) to roll-out their FTTC/P “fibre broadband” (any speed) network to cover around 95% of premises by 2017 (Airband also won a smaller wireless contract), although the estimated figure in terms of premises that can order a “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) capable service today is around 87% for both counties combined (this is blamed on the “under-performance of the commercial sector’s private investment plans“).

By comparison the £69m Phase Two project suffered a huge delay after failing to reach an agreement with BT in 2015 (here), although they have this year signed several related contracts with Gigaclear and Airband for a mix of ultrafast FTTP and fixed wireless broadband to cover 60,000+ extra premises across the region by December 2019 (the aim here appears to be to deliver 95% coverage of “superfast broadband“).

However Graham Long told a meeting of Devon Council’s Corporate Infrastructure and Regulatory Services Scrutiny Committee on 26th September 2017 (Tuesday) that he fears the standing task group of four (now five) councillors, which was setup to scrutinise the CDS project, is failing the public by conducting its work behind closed doors (see the agenda and webcast – Graham Long’s first section is at 3 mins 18 secs).

Graham Long told the meeting:

“[The task group] takes evidence in private, behind closed doors, with press and public excluded, with witnessed prohibited from recording proceedings and no formal minutes taken. This is contrary to the county council’s articles of constitution and the Nolan principles. It is also contrary to the secretary of state for local government, as expressed at the 2017 local government association conference.”

The Nolan principles say that “information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for doing so,” although while there may be occasions where confidential data could be discussed it is not clear why all of the related meetings should still be held in private.

Graham also noted that the terms of reference for the task group say it will be on-going until the broadband roll-out is complete, which could take a very long time.

Graham Long told ISPreview.co.uk:

“The irony of all this of course is that whilst full Scrutiny Committee meetings are public and webcast for all to see, the “Standing Action Group” they have now set up meets with witnesses behind closed doors, with press and public not allowed to be present and no formal minutes taken. I was a witness in front of the Standing action Group on Sept 14 and we met in the same room where the webcast was made on Tuesday, but the meeting was private and the webcast system was not used.

Making it a Standing Task Group taking evidence from witnesses in camera allows for any subject, not just broadband, to be scrutinised without witnesses being heard by the public and press. The Task Group terms of reference say on timescale, that delegation of witness scrutiny will continue “until roll out is complete or the Task Group is fully satisfied with progress” which at the earliest is 2019 or even 2023, if you include the Phase 1 BT clawback period when BT pay monies back to CDS under the terms of their contract.

CDS could therefore still be running broadband roll-out until then and scrutiny of CDS could therefore be going on behind closed doors for another 7 years.”

However the committee chairman, Cllr Alistair Dewhirst (note: he is a member of the aforementioned task group), disagrees with Graham’s view and claims the council’s approach will enable the task group to make faster progress that involves more witnesses. The councillor added that feedback from the witnesses would also be reflected in a report to the public scrutiny meeting on 28th November 2017.

In response Graham was quick to point out that this means only the task group will hear what the witnesses (including CDS) have to say, while the public have to make do with the report that the task group write (i.e. “the press and public do not hear it from the ‘horses mouth!’“, said Graham).