Gigaclear Tweaks East Gloucestershire’s FTTP Broadband Rollout Contract

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) directorate has posted another contract modification notice for Gigaclear’s Project Gigabit contract in East Gloucestershire (Lot 18), which slightly increases the planned roll-out of full fibre broadband (FTTP) by 325 premises and yet manages to reduce the contract value by £777,041 (public investment).

The original Lot 18 contract was first awarded all the way back in February 2024 (here) and was initially valued at £16.6m (state aid), with a goal of extending gigabit-capable broadband to an additional 4,400 premises in remote rural areas of the county. But it’s gone through several contract modifications since then, which has shrunk the planned deployment.

According to the latest BDUK data for August 2028 (here), Gigaclear’s Lot 18 contract was expected to cover 3,550 premises in hard-to-reach parts of East Gloucestershire and they’ve already completed the build to 2,070 of those (58% completion). However, such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons.

For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same areas. 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 over time.

The latest contract modification for Lot 18 today states: “As a result of the scope change, the contract value has reduced by £777,041 from £10,815,056 to £10,038,014 The change includes 912 additions and 587 removals, resulting in a net increase of 325 premises and an increase in the contracted scope from 3,547 to 3,872 premises.”

The catch is that there may be further changes in the future, which could go in a different direction. So, it’s not always easy to tell what the final picture will be until you actually reach the end of each contracted build.