Growth Plan Hints at Planning Changes to Boost Gigabit Broadband

The UK Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, has today published a new Growth Plan 2022, which proposes to “liberate the private sector” by encouraging investment (i.e. removing barriers to the flow of private capital) and boosting infrastructure by “liberalising the planning system and streamlining consultation and approval requirements“.

The CEO of CityFibre, Greg Mesch, was quick to welcome the Growth Plan 2022, which they hope might aid their rollout of full fibre broadband across Britain: “We are delighted the government has focused on rollout by announcing measures in the Growth Plan that will decrease the time, cost and disruption of delivering gigabit connectivity to homes and businesses across the country.”

However, the document itself only mentions the word “broadband” once, which reflects a proposed amendment to the existing Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill (PSTI). The additional change would give “telecoms operators easier access to telegraph poles on private land, supporting the delivery of gigabit capable broadband” (most poles are on public land). But the specifics of this have yet to be revealed.

Just to give this some context. Openreach had previously complained that the PSTI didn’t go far enough with respect to telecoms poles and access to Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs), because they haven’t been extended to “allow us to upgrade the infrastructure we have in place, either over the pole network or in those blocks of flats” (here).

Similarly, CityFibre had previously complained about running into issues with wayleaves (i.e. securing legal land / property access agreements), such as in Scotland where the operator noted that “there are a lot of poles sitting in people’s backyards” (private property). However, both Westminster and the Scottish Government will need to tread carefully here, since regular folk rarely like operators trampling over their personal gardens and poles are one of the least popular pieces of broadband infrastructure.

The plan also talks more generally about wider changes to the planning process, which may indirectly benefit the deployment of new mobile and broadband networks, but that will depend upon the detail. We’re also unsure whether this reflects some of the proposed changes under existing bills, which will only become clear once more detail is revealed.

Extract from the Growth Plan

The Growth Plan announces that new legislation will be brought forward in the coming months to address these barriers by reducing unnecessary burdens to speed up the delivery of much-needed infrastructure. This includes:

• reducing the burden of environmental assessments

• reducing bureaucracy in the consultation process

• reforming habitats and species regulations

• increasing flexibility to make changes to a DCO once it has been submitted.

The Growth Plan also announces further sector specific changes to accelerate delivery of infrastructure, including:

• prioritising the delivery of National Policy Statements for energy, water resources and national networks, and of a cross-government action plan for reform of the Nationally Significant Infrastructure planning system

• bringing onshore wind planning policy in line with other infrastructure to allow it to be deployed more easily in England

• reforms to accelerate roads delivery, including by consenting more through the Highways Act 1980 and by considering options for changing the Judicial Review system to avoid claims which cause unnecessary delays to delivery

• amendments to the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill to give telecoms operators easier access to telegraph poles on private land, supporting the delivery of gigabit capable broadband

The Growth Plan also sets out the infrastructure projects that the government will “prioritise for acceleration, across transport, energy and digital infrastructure“, although the list they give only mentions their own £5bn Project Gigabit programme (latest update) under the digital infrastructure label.

Finally, the plan states that the government “will set out its plans on how it will further support digital rollout to drive growth“, which suggests that they might make moves to further reduce barriers to the broadband rollout. On the other hand, this could just be a re-announcement of changes being developed under existing bills, so we’ll reserve our judgement until there are some concrete details.