Recommendation 19

The National Audit Office’s report describes how the Superfast Programme was able to leave the very hardest to reach premises until last when, in a bid to meet its timeline, the Department prioritised maximising the number of premises reached over providing for those in greatest need.53 We asked for assurance that, should the programme timetable start to slip, the people with the poorest broadband would not be sacrificed and put to the back of the queue once more. The Department told us it was committed to an ‘outside-in’ approach and that its priority was to ensure that those who do not have access to superfast broadband will receive decent broadband.54 The National Audit Office’s report referred to the final 1% of premises as “prohibitively expensive” and the Department explained that it was assessing the value for money of alternative technologies for delivering the fastest speeds possible to these premises.55