Decision details

Cabinet considered a report detailing progress on the development and delivery of the Cheshire, Warrington & Halton Local Broadband Plan.

The project had completed a procurement process to appoint a strategic telecommunications investment partner, the successful bidder being British Telecom PLC (BT). The strategic telecommunications investment partner would provide over £9.0m to deliver and gap fund the rollout of fibre broadband to rural areas of Cheshire, Warrington and Halton. The project was expected to deliver total coverage of over 96% of premises able to take-up a fibre broadband service by the summer 2015 compared with around 78% coverage at present.

To complement the deployment of superfast broadband services an integrated demand stimulation campaign would be led by the project to encourage take-up of fibre broadband.

In July 2013 a partner would be procured to deliver a tailored programme of business support for eligible Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) to ensure they could make best use of high speed digital services.

An addendum was circulated at the meeting which discussed a potential concern of the Council’s as to the extent to which British Telecom’s contract dealt with rescoping the project in the event that funding was withheld. Following discussions with BT, BDUK and the Minister Ed Vaizey,  the Council had agreed to accept the contract on the condition that BT signed an accompanying letter committing to establish robust processes to manage such a situation should it arise.

RESOLVED

That the report be noted and the appointment of BT as the project’s strategic telecommunications investment partner be endorsed.