Briefings and responses

Councils have continually raised on-going concerns over residents' lack of access to fast and reliable broadband especially in rural areas

The LGA has worked with Government and Parliament to raise councils’ ongoing concerns over residents’ lack of access to fast and reliable broadband. Many rural areas, in particular, struggle with speeds of less than 2Mbps while others are unable to receive broadband at all.

Access to fast and reliable broadband is a necessity for households and businesses in the UK.

Key briefing and summary points for local government on the Digital Economy Bill.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted that broadband is essential infrastructure. Access to fast and reliable broadband connectivity is vital to help communities stay connected, drive inclusive recovery and create quality jobs.

Digital access and skills are essential to enabling people to fully participate in an increasingly digital society. Tackling the digital divide will be crucial to addressing social and economic inequalities and levelling up every community.

The regulation proposed in this Bill is aimed at ensuring platforms have systems and processes in place to deal with illegal and harmful content and their associated risk, particularly to children and young people.

Councils want to go further to tackle regional inequalities in broadband infrastructure and accelerate the roll out in hard-to-reach communities. Local authority digital champions act as a central point of contact, helping to extend gigabit-capable broadband across the country as quickly as possible. We are therefore calling on Government to fully fund a digital champion in every local authority.

Upgrading, replacing and reconnecting these telecare devices, just one element of the PSTN switchover, to the digital network will be extremely costly. GLA Economics estimates the upgrade costs to be £31 million for London boroughs and impacting over 63,000 users.

A Westminster Hall Debate on the Implementation of the Shared Rural Network