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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of creating a mandated system with mandated compensation to address customers' complaints about broadband.

Ofcom, as the UK’s regulator for the communications industry, is responsible for issues around consumer compensation for broadband. In March 2017, Ofcom consulted on introducing an automatic compensation scheme for fixed broadband and landline telecoms to protect consumers that suffer from specific service failures. Subsequently, industry agreed to introduce a voluntary automatic compensation scheme, which came into effect from 1 April 2019. It covers new orders placed, or problems reported since 1 April 2019, and sets out compensation amounts for delayed repairs following a loss of service, missed repairs or appointments, as well as delays to the start of a new service.

The largest broadband providers have signed up to the scheme as a result of which Ofcom have indicated that nine in ten landline and broadband customers are already covered by the scheme. They estimate that it will benefit consumers by up to £126m more per year in compensation payments, compared to £16m per year they received previously. Ofcom is satisfied that the voluntary scheme is a fair, effective and sufficient means to ensure telecoms consumers are compensated when service quality falls short, and that it adequately addresses the need to take regulatory action in this area. Ofcom plans to review the effectiveness of this scheme after it has been in place for 12 months.

In addition, where an individual feels that their service fault has been dealt with in an unsatisfactory manner by their telecoms provider, and if their complaint has not been resolved after eight weeks, they can refer their case to an independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. ADR schemes can review individual cases and any decisions they make are binding on telecoms providers. There are two ADR schemes for telecoms, the Ombudsman Services (OS) and the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS), and all communications providers must be members of one of these schemes.