County Council Cabinet agrees broadband grant scheme to benefit residents and businesses

Cabinet Members at Derbyshire County Council have agreed to pump £900,000 into a project to improve digital connectivity in communities where broadband speeds are lowest – particularly in rural areas.

Around 32,000 homes and businesses across the county still receive less than 100mbps in areas with no prospect of commercial providers rolling out full fibre within the next three years.

Of these, around 3,000 premises are still receiving very slow speeds of less than 10mbps making everyday activities such as streaming digital TV channels and online banking virtually impossible.

At a meeting held on Thursday 16th October, Cabinet Members gave the go-ahead to use funding from the council’s Digital Derbyshire reserves to set up two grant programmes to boost broadband speeds in premises with some of the poorest performing internet connections.

The ‘Gigabit Fibre Connectivity Grant’ will provide a full fibre network to clusters of ‘hard to reach’ premises which are close to one another. 

The ‘Interim Connectivity Grant’ will focus on providing short-term solutions, such as satellite or mobile broadband, to properties which:
* are in remote areas where delivery of a fixed full fibre network is too expensive and there is no commercial roll-out planned
* currently use outdated copper-only lines which are only capable of a maximum of 24mbps

Councillor Carol Wood, Derbyshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Net Zero and Environment, said: “Decent broadband is essential to every-day life and something many of us take for granted. But we know that having a reliable internet connection is a postcode lottery with many businesses and residents in rural areas still losing out.

“By launching these two grant programmes, we can help improve broadband speeds for lots of local people and help prevent rural communities from falling behind in the digital divide.”  

The county council continues to push the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) to prepare proposals for its digital programme and identify appropriate funding to help improve broadband speeds in more homes and businesses in Derbyshire in the future.

More information about the grant schemes will be made available on the Digital Derbyshire website at www.digitalderbyshire.org.uk when it becomes available.