Chair of Government’s Building Digital UK Agency Resigns
The Government (DSIT) has just confirmed that the Chair of their broadband and mobile centric Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, Simon Blagden, resigned from his position yesterday “with immediate effect“. The details of Simon’s departure have not been made public, but it’s perhaps not surprising given the recent change of Government.
A spokesperson at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said: “The Department would like to thank Mr Blagden for the significant contribution he has made in this role. Arrangements for appointing his successor will be confirmed in due course.”
The Labour Party’s recent 2024 General Election Manifesto (here) made clear that they would be making a “renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030.” The party has already given mild support to Project Gigabit and appears to be aware that any big changes would risk adding further delays to the gigabit roll-out. But aside from reform of the planning system (here), solid details of their wider plans in this area remain unclear.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/fujitsu-post-office-scandal-building-digital-uk/
Conservative donor and former director of the tech giant implicated in the Post Office scandal was rewarded with a job running the government’s broadband rollout – three years after his old firm was found to be at fault.
Simon Blagden, who stepped down as non-executive director at Fujitsu UK in 2019, was made chair of the government agency responsible for delivering faster broadband and mobile coverage in 2022.
Mmm this is very surface level analysis and I doubt the second reason was much involved.
Who knows what is the real reason for resignation.
The bearings on the mates self-agrandishment merry-ground needed oiling, again !
“Immediate effect” , . . . . No managed hand-over of this project of national strategic significance then ?
Don’t tell me, he left a note saying “There’s no money left and its all fluffing chaos”
Here’s a more in-depth analysis:
https://news.sky.com/story/may-risks-cronyism-row-as-tory-donor-eyes-trade-minister-job-11743714
All change….
Why bother resigning now, it would make no difference who is incharge [of bduk] to affect the government policy.
Unless the government wanted him out in which case, fine that is their right and responsibility if it affects the program.
If the opinion expressed at the recent LINX conference is anything to go by then I doubt whether many in the industry will mourn his passing. Jeremy Chelot of Netomnia has described BDUK as a waste of taxpayers money.
And I stand by it!
Yet your company still uses their broadband vouchers. Only a waste when it suits your narrative.
There could be several reasons. One possibility is that Simon’s vision for the future and his approach to achieving it directly contrast with those of the current government. The differences in their methods could be so significant that he felt resigning was his only option.
Another possibility is that Simon might have been involved in something ethically questionable, and resignation was the only way for him to maintain his reputation. We simply don’t know for sure.
What has BDUK cost so far? How many premises have been connected as a result of its efforts? The answers to those questions will tell you whether BDUK is worth keeping.
Pretty sure the last project brought super fast speeds to over 95% of the country, the current fibre project has apparently passed over a million homes so far. Seems like good progress so far. My house is going to get connected in this project, and there is no other company willing to do it themselves, we’ve been asking everyone for years.
They won’t tell you. I’ve tried to get a list of ‘in scope’ postcodes for their Hampshire project via a FOI request but they refused to share any data saying that it was ‘commercially sensitive’. It’s all very opaque and secretive while they play with 100s of millions of taxpayer money.
Its also good to put a face to a cause:-
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/fujitsu-post-office-scandal-building-digital-uk/
Guess whose dartboard that’s going to be affixed to ?
Something very fishy has happened here. A senior Civil Servant will not have resigned, being sacked would have financially far better for him.
I strongly suspect he’s been involved in something and threatened with resign or else!
Another PPE type inside job perhaps?
He wouldn’t have been a civil servant I don’t think. He was on their board, not part of the operations