BDUK Require Greater Clarity for Removing Premises from Project Gigabit Broadband Contracts

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has notified suppliers (network operators) to its £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme that they will, from 14th April 2026, be required to provide more details of the reasons for removing homes / premises (UPRNs) from the scope of an existing deployment contract.

The contracts awarded under Project Gigabit’s infrastructure subsidy scheme (GIS) are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK deployment plans. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their deployment plans, which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas (i.e. the need to avoid public funding being used to overbuild commercial gigabit networks).

The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected.

Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change a bit over time. Normally when a supplier wants to make such a change to an existing contract (i.e. removing premises from a previously planned build) it first needs to submit a Change Request (CR), which BDUK then evaluates for things like value for money and technical capability.

The CR process previously didn’t require the supplier to provide too much detail for each property (UPRN) when de-scoping them from a contracted build. But from next week suppliers will now also need to provide reason codes against each UPRN proposed to be descoped from a project.

BDUK’s New Reason Codes

➤ Gigabit: gigabit broadband is already available to access at the premises

➤ In build Gigabit: the premises will have access to gigabit broadband before the next National Rolling Open Market Review (OMR)

➤ Premises Type: the premises would not benefit from a gigabit broadband connection eg water tower, caravan or derelict property

➤ Hard to Reach: Wayleaves or complex engineering issues make the premises undeliverable

➤ Other: none of the above (more “contextual” information must be provided)

The goal of this change is to help inform future BDUK intervention planning (i.e. making it easier for BDUK to understand any specific obstacles that may exist to network deployments in certain areas). But we can imagine that this could also make the change request process a lot more laborious for suppliers (i.e. slower), particularly when it comes to larger or more complex changes. Liberal use of copy and paste seems likely to be the response.