BDUK Change CEO as Gigabit Broadband Project Struggles with Slow Progress UPDATE2

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has reportedly changed its current CEO, Paul Norris, and appointed the man who oversaw the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Dean Creamer, to take on the role after concerns were allegedly raised over “slow” progress in their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout.

The aim of the project is to extend networks capable of delivering “gigabit” (1000Mbps) download speeds to “at least” 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 and then “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by around 2030 (here). Commercial builds are generally expected to do the first 80%+, while this project focuses on the final 20% of premises (mostly rural and semi-rural areas), albeit with the possible exception of the final 0.3% (too expensive, requiring alternative solutions).

So far, Project Gigabit itself has only had a tiny impact upon overall gigabit broadband coverage as the first subsidised build contracts only started being awarded a year ago, with commercial deployments (mostly in urban areas) thus doing most of the heavy lifting. Not that you’d know it to read one of the government’s (DSIT) statements, which routinely take full credit for everything.

A Government spokesman said:

“Paul Norris has had three successful years as Chief Executive Officer of Building Digital UK (BDUK). Our £5 billion Project Gigabit programme is on track to deliver nationwide gigabit-capable broadband by 2030 and we’ve already made £1.9 billion available – with more to be spent as we continue to get this help to communities that would otherwise miss out.

76% of UK homes and businesses now have access to gigabit broadband, compared to only 6% in 2019, including Portsmouth to Penrith and Swansea to Stirling, are already benefitting from gigabit-capable connections – a huge increase thanks to our targeted support in some of the most rural and hard to reach parts of the country.”

According to BDUK’s recent corporate plan for 2023 to 2026, Project Gigabit expects to have directly helped to deliver gigabit-capable connectivity to 1.56 million premises by the end of 2025 (here). The total value of all the Project Gigabit procurements launched to date (inc. those that have yet to be awarded) is around £1.4bn and rising, as more enter the pipeline (the £1.9bn mentioned above is larger because it adds even newer procurements, such as the cross-regional one).

However, as noted above, the first subsidy contracts for parts of England only started to be awarded a year ago and many big projects, such as for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, have yet to be awarded (some haven’t even entered the procurement phase yet). Some of those contracts might thus not even be finalised until late 2024 or into 2025, with build to follow.

Suffice to say that Project Gigabit itself is perhaps moving a bit more slowly than everybody, including the Government, would ideally like. The Telegraph‘s (paywall) piece highlights how industry sources claim that BDUK’s CEO, Paul Norris, was thus “pushed out amid concerns about slow progress” – something the government dispute. But we’ve long suggested that this might also be partly due to the government failing to adequately resource BDUK. Complaints about delays and slow communication are not a new problem, with network operators frequently pointing them out to us.

One thing the Telegraph does get wrong though is to suggest, using a flimsy report as evidence, that the government itself has been “ploughing money into densely populated areas that are much easier and cheaper to reach in a bid to reach its own targets.” But this seems to incorrectly conflate separate commercial investments and projects with state aid supported builds.

Project Gigabit itself has generally only been awarding subsidy contracts that hold to a tight focus on rural and semi-rural areas (i.e. disadvantaged areas where there is no commercial gigabit coverage or any rollout plans that have been identified for the next 3 years). Areas with sub-30Mbps speeds are also being prioritised, albeit NOT to the exclusion of all else (necessary to avoid a build becoming cost inefficient).

Overall, it remains unclear whether changing BDUK’s CEO will have much of an impact, although a new leader often brings new ideas – for good or ill.

UPDATE 31st July 2023 @ 7am

Small update to the government’s quote above. Dean Creamer will also formally become CEO in September 2023.

UPDATE 3rd August 2023

Clarified the reason for the difference between the £1.4bn and £1.9bn figure above.