CityFibre Secure Wayleaves to Build FTTP to 1 Million UK Social Homes

Network operator CityFibre has today announced that they’ve secured enough legal UK land and property access agreements (wayleaves) to connect over 1 million homes owned by local authorities and housing associations to their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network.

CityFibre has worked closely with major housing associations including Places for People, Thirteen Group, and Sheffield City Council to secure the wayleaves, which can be both costly and tricky things to agree. Not to mention that many tenants are often legally required to ensure a landlord has granted permission for the installation to take place, before work can begin.

The success supports CityFibre’s wider ambition to cover up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt) – across over 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). The latest announcement also reveals that they’ve now passed 2.8 million homes (up from 2.6m in late March 2023), but only 2.4 million of those are currently considered to be ‘Ready for Service‘ by an ISP (up from 2.3m).

Sanjay Sudra, Head of Wayleave Field Services at CityFibre, said:

“World class digital infrastructure is no longer a luxury, it is now an essential utility that everyone needs to have access to. From managing household services and accessing employment, to staying in touch with friends and family, rock solid home broadband has never been more important.

Working closely with forward thinking housing associations and local authorities, CityFibre is helping to ensure more people have fair and easy access to quality services, whether they own or rent their home. As we celebrate this landmark achievement, we appreciate there is more work to be done to help as many people as possible access to this next generation of connectivity.”

As it’s been nearly three months since the previous 2.6 million build figure was revealed, and around 200,000 premises have been added in that period, then we can very roughly estimate that the pace of build is likely to be somewhere around 70-75k per month. This would actually mark an improvement from the estimate of 50k that we saw in January 2023, which was down from their prior peak of c.100k and followed a spate of job cuts.

However, it remains to be seen whether they’ll hit their original coverage target by the end of 2025, which would require a more rapid pace of build to be occurring.