To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding for the roll out of fibre broadband.

As of January 2024, ThinkBroadband reports that over 80% of premises in the UK can now access a gigabit capable connection. To date, most of this rollout has been achieved by the commercial market.

Government acknowledges that there are premises that remain outside of the scope of the commercial build plans despite the commercial market going further than originally expected. These premises are some of the hardest and most expensive to reach in the UK and therefore require government subsidy if we are to achieve our ambition of nationwide gigabit coverage by 2030.

Project Gigabit is the government’s £5 billion investment in ensuring the premises which would otherwise be left out of commercial plans, get access to a gigabit capable connection. As of December 2023, we have 16 Project Gigabit contracts in place worth approximately £667 million of government subsidy. This, combined with the ongoing procurements equals more than £2 billion of investment to support the deployment of gigabit-capable broadband. We expect more procurements to go live and further contracts to be awarded and signed within the coming months.

For further updates on progress, including information on Project Gigabit procurements, Building Digital UK (BDUK) releases a quarterly update on progress towards our mission of nationwide coverage by 2030 with the latest being published in December 2023.