The governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, which has a budget of £730m (could rise to £1.03bn by 2017) to help 90% of "people in each local authority area" gain access to a superfast broadband (24Mbps+) ISP service by 2015, looks set to spend more than £1 Million on legal services by the end of its programme.


The legal costs are expected to cover contract negotiations, state aid applications, grant agreements and general advice for local authorities (among other things). To be fair it's not uncommon for expensive legal services to gobble up public money, especially on such large projects.

Meanwhile local councils are busy racing to meet the governments end of February 2012 deadline for submission and approval of their "draft" Local Broadband Plans (LBP). Most should make the target (details) but some do not intend to submit a bid (e.g. North Tyneside) and a third risk being late.

The final plan then "needs to be agreed" by the end of April 2012 and those that fail to meet this goal could have their funding pulled.