Recommendation 10

The Department explained that it was focussed on removing barriers to rapid roll out, such as the cost of streetworks or a planning system that prevents telecoms operators from getting access to premises, by working with other government departments and through legislation and regulation.22 The National Audit Office’s report included state aid as one such barrier and said that the process of securing state aid approval to provide subsidy to suppliers can take 12–24 months to complete.23 We asked the Department to set out the latest position following its submission of non-binding proposals on state aid to the European Union in late 2019. The Department told us that it expected to be able to deal with state aid as a domestic matter after the end of the transition period in December 2020.24 It said that it regarded the possibility of remaining subject to EU rules after that time as a hypothetical scenario, for which it had not prepared a contingency plan, but believed that if necessary, the process could be speeded up.25