Local Government Association Offers Digital Connectivity Grants

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents hundreds of councils from across England and Wales, has started offering some seemingly small grants to help local authorities plan for and improve 4G, 5G and “full fibre” broadband network coverage across their areas.

The new grants form part of the LGA’s new Digital Connectivity Programme, which aims to help build up the skills and capacity of local councils to “take advantage of the opportunities offered by connectivity to your local place and communities.”

The inaugural year of the programme, which started this week, will initially look to support just six local authorities from across urban and rural settings. Apparently the “first round” of this will involve those councils receiving grants of £20,000 each, which seems unlikely to make much of a dent in the problem itself but in the current climate it may be a case of ‘every little helps’.

Councillor Peter Fleming, Chair of the LGA’s Improvement Board, said:

“Councils are best placed to help their communities get through the coronavirus pandemic.

The Digital Connectivity programme, which is part of our sector led improvement offer, is helping all councils to provide vital services for residents who don’t have access or confidence to use digital platforms.

As Covid-19 is causing more families to work and educate from home, it is more important than ever that all households have access to good, reliable broadband.”

The Application period will conclude on 12th November 2020. Councils will be expected to show how their projects will improve connectivity, as well as their sustainability after the funding period and how the learning will be shared with other councils. It’s unclear how much total funding will be used to support this scheme.