Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress his Department is making on the implementation of the Local Full Fibre Networks programme, announced in Spring Budget 2017.

Following its announcement in the Spring 2017 Budget, the LFFN programme invested £10m in market trials of its full fibre stimulation approach across the country.

After evaluation of these trials, in November 2017 LFFN launched its £190m Challenge Fund, designed to stimulate commercial investment in full fibre networks in both rural and urban locations across the whole of the UK. Local bodies were invited to submit formal bids, and the first round of funding was allocated to 13 successful bidders that were announced in the Chancellor’s Spring Statement in March 2018.

In March 2018 LFFN also delivered on a manifesto commitment with the launch of its £67m Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme for small to medium sized businesses and the local communities around them across the UK.