Havering Seeks Gigabit Broadband Network for Council Flats

The Council for the London Borough of Havering has this week announced that they are “seeking expressions of interest from broadband suppliers” to help extend the benefits of gigabit-capable connectivity (FTTP) to over 4,900 council-owned flats in the area, which are currently only served by “old copper broadband lines“.

The council’s Expression of Interests form states that the local authority is seeking for all of its housing stock to be “connected to full fibre broadband, including multi-dwelling units and single dwelling units by the end of 2025“, which doesn’t leave much time for securing an agreement and building the network. But it’s certainly not impossible.

Such deployments in London tend to be more the domain of ISPs and network operators like CommunityFibre, Hyperoptic, Openreach, Virgin Media (VMO2) and G.Network. The provision of such services to social housing, particularly Multi-Dwelling Units (MDU), usually also requires the signing of a favourable and flexible master wayleave agreement (i.e. a legal deal for land and property access).

The council’s announcement sets a requirement for the service to deliver download speeds of “at least 300Mbps“. To support the roll-out, Havering Council is initially inviting full fibre providers to express an interest in installing their infrastructure in 596 council-owned blocks of flats, with a view to agreeing terms for wayleave agreements.

Councillor Ray Morgon, Leader of Havering Council, said:

“We are committed to making Havering a borough with first class connectivity for all, and welcome expressions of interest from fibre optic providers that will help to improve the infrastructure to our council-owned flats and benefit our residents living there.”

Suppliers with any interest in this must respond by 12:00pm on 16th October 2023.