BDUK Expand CityFibre’s Norfolk UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency recently revealed that their £114m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Norfolk (Lot 7), which was won by CityFibre in July 2023 (here), has seen its scope expanded. As a result the public funding has been boosted to £128.8m and the targeted premises for intervention has risen from 62,282 to 75,587.

The first homes under CityFibre’s state aid supported build contract for Norfolk started to go live on their new 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) network, in the rural communities of Newton St Faith and Horsham St Faith, a few short months ago (here). The connections marked an important milestone for CityFibre’s contract, which originally looked like this:

CityFibre’s Norfolk contract (Lot 7) – Original

• £114m Project Gigabit investment (state aid)
• £43m CityFibre investment (commercial)
• Connections for 62,200 rural homes and businesses (state aid supported part)
• Locations including Buxton, Castle Acre and Horning will be among those to benefit.
• A further 8,000 premises in the north west of the county are being reviewed for inclusion subject to survey in the next six months.
• Survey work completed anticipated December 2023
• Build commences anticipated January 2024
• Build completion anticipated December 2028

The reference to a further 8,000 premises being reviewed for possible future inclusion into the project is relevant, although if confirmed this would have only taken them to slightly over 70k premises. The good news is that BDUK have now identified even more eligible premises that could be added to the Norfolk Intervention Area, increasing the total contract scope to 75,587 premises (i.e. greater coverage than planned). The additional postcodes can be found here.

The changes seem to reflect, at least in part, reductions to the plans of commercial operators, which have led to an increased need for intervention in the areas of Hemsby, Winterton, Ormsby St Margaret, Loddon and Harleston. At the same time, there have also been increases in commercial operator coverage plans, which has led to a smaller reduction of public investment requirement in the areas of Poringland and Framlingham Earl.

Neil Madle, Partnership Manager at CityFibre, told ISPreview:

“Our Project Gigabit rollout of full fibre broadband to hard-to-reach communities in Norfolk is ongoing, having already connected the first customers to our network earlier this year. We welcome the increased scope from BDUK which will allow us to extend our reach across Norfolk, bringing the benefits of enhanced digital connectivity to even more residents.”

Changes to existing contracts can occur due to various reasons, such as operators finding certain areas to be more expensive (or possibly cheaper) to build than originally expected, as well as greater than expected coverage of commercial networks (i.e. reducing the need for state aid builds) or knock-on impacts from neighbouring build contracts in other LOTS etc. Suffice to say that such changes are not unusual, and contracts often need to adapt.

The Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme ultimately aims to help extend 1Gbps (download) capable networks to reach “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%of the UK) by 2030. This is focused on upgrading the final 10-20% of hardest to reach premises (usually those in rural areas), with the other 80-90% being largely done by commercial deployments (current UK coverage is already over 85%).