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BDUK Dispute Leaves Cumbria Villages Waiting for Faster Broadband

Thursday, Jul 5th, 2018 (12:01 am) - Score 2,005

A dispute between Openreach (BT), the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme and the local authority’s Connecting Cumbria project appears to be stalling a plan that could otherwise see fixed line “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) ISP services extended to a number of previously excluded villages.

At present the local state aid supported Connecting Cumbria (CC) project is working with Openreach to roll-out “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services to reach 95% of premises in the county by the end of 2018 (contract 2), most of which are being delivered by the expansion of FTTC and a few FTTP services. So far around 93% of local homes and businesses have already been covered.

However, the latest situation stems from a decision last year, which resulted in 146 postcodes being reclassified to be eligible for State Aid (here). Previously the postcodes had been de-scoped from CC due to a conflict over the existing commercial coverage of Solway’s fixed wireless broadband ISP network. Despite this Openreach later hinted that some of the postcodes, such as those for Hayton, could be upgraded within the existing budget.

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Fast forward to March 2018 and the UK Minister of State for the Ministry of Justice, Rory Stewart (MP for Penrith and The Border), is said by residents to have assured them that Hayton and other areas were indeed on the list to be considered for the next phase of improvements. Both Hayton Parish Council and Connecting Cumbria have previously supported this push.

Unfortunately doubts have now been cast over this after Rory revealed to one of his constituents that the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme, which oversees CC, had recently rejected a related request. The message has now been passed to ISPreview.co.uk and is pasted below.

Rory Stewart MP said:

“Back in March I was told that BT had included Hayton in the proposal submitted to Cumbria County Council for the next phase, and that Connecting Cumbria would give full support to BT’s evaluation, subject to value for money assurance with BDUK, and then planning. However, a situation has arisen which is preventing this from happening.

Without going into the technical and protracted details, the position is that a change request was raised with BT in April 2017 to utilise cost efficiencies from Contract 1 for further superfast fibre deployment in Cumbria, but BDUK rejected this, and Hayton is one of a number of areas caught up in the disagreement.

Ultimately, BDUK and BT are arguing over technical points to the detriment to the people of Cumbria, and I have written to the Minister to ask what could be done to further encourage them to agree a way forward. Connecting Cumbria are also meeting with BDUK on Monday to see if they have made any progress in their discussions with BT.

It is immensely frustrating but everyone is working on a solution, and I will continue to press them hard. Thank you again for taking the time to write.”

In case anybody has forgotten, the BDUK contracts include a clause that requires the supplier (e.g. BT) to return public funding both as a result of efficiency savings (e.g. if something didn’t cost as much to roll-out as first forecast) and for rising levels of service take-up in upgraded areas (aka – clawback / gainshare). This can then be reinvested in order to further boost local coverage.

Across the UK some £210m+ is currently set to be returned (Jan 2018 figure) as a result of efficiency savings, with clawback potentially adding up to another £536m on top of that. Both figures are likely to rise further as take-up improves and contracts complete, with the funding expected to then be reinvested in order to help push superfast broadband to cover 98% of the UK by around 2020.

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A Spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’re keen to upgrade these areas, and we’re working very closely with the council and BDUK to resolve the situation so that we reach as many properties as possible with the funding available.”

Our Connecting Cumbria partnership has been a huge success so far, making faster broadband available to more than 126,000 homes and businesses across the region.”

Sadly BDUK (i.e. the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport) were unable to clarify their reasons for the rejection of the aforementioned proposal, although they did confirm that meetings would be taking place with Rory Stewart MP to discuss all aspects of the superfast programme. We also received a similar response from Connecting Cumbria.

A Spokesperson for DCMS told ISPreview.co.uk:

“Superfast connectivity in Cumbria has gone from 0.6% to nearly 93% in six years and we’re committed to working with local bodies and suppliers to continue this progress.”

A Spokesperson for Connecting Cumbria added:

“Currently Connecting Cumbria is working with BDUK to do everything possible to support the ongoing delivery of superfast connectivity in Cumbria. To this end officers from Cumbria County Council will join Raj Kalia in a meeting with Rory Stewart MP to discuss all aspects of the superfast programme.”

Changing BDUK contracts mid-flight can be complicated and strictly speaking local authorities are supposed to wait until the end before they can harness funding returned via savings or clawback (many of the contracts run for 7 years from around 2012/13), although there is some room for tweaks as we’ve seen when BT offered the early return of some clawback linked funding for reinvestment (here).

Clearly extracting cost efficiencies in the Cumbria contract is proving to be more problematic and for now the reason remains unclear. In our experience BDUK tends to have a fairly good reason for rejecting such requests, although on this occasion they’ve not said what that is.

Tony Nuttall, Hayton Resident, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“It’s very disappointing that political in-fighting between BT and BDUK is preventing people in Cumbria from getting access to a usable broadband service. They’re the very people who should be working hard to help us. I’ve been fighting for improvements for a decade to support my clock repair business, and while I’ve had no end of promises over the years nothing has actually been done.

I’m more or less resigned to retiring before my business can benefit from the tens of millions that have been spent in the county. It’s time for the Minister to step in and get this long-delayed project moving again.”

Sadly residents in the affected communities look set to remain under a cloud of uncertainty until the problem is resolved.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
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