Evidence from BT for Public Bill Committee: Growth and
Infrastructure Bill
Provisions to enable roll out of high-speed fibre broadband
22 November 2012
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Growth and Infrastructure Bill: provisions to enable roll out of high-speed fibre broadband
BT welcomes the Government’s recent stated commitment to address issues to help fast-track the
rollout of high-speed fibre broadband. The Growth and Infrastructure Bill plays a critical part in that.
Clause 7 of the Bill is designed to facilitate the provision of communications infrastructure. It makes
provision in relation to section 109 of the Communications Act 2003, which relates to the Electronic
Communications Code. Specifically we endorse the proposed amendment to the Electronic
Communications Code to enshrine the need to promote economic growth in the planning regime.
The Bill will, with appropriate secondary legislation, deliver greatly needed relaxation of some of the
current planning restrictions and boost communications providers’ ability to deploy this critical fibre
infrastructure at pace.
Context to the issue: roll out of high-speed fibre broadband
BT is committed to make high-speed fibre broadband widely available across the UK, investing
£2.5bn in its commercial rollout programme. Our fibre broadband services are already available to
12 million homes and the programme is on track to deliver to two-thirds of UK premises by spring
2014. We are also bidding for public funds and working with local authorities, through the
Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) initiative, to extend the network into areas where the
commercial case for investment is more challenging; this will bring enormous economic and social
benefits to millions and potentially enable high-speed broadband to reach beyond 90% of premises.
However, street-furniture planning regulations have delayed roll out in some areas. If there is a
delay in these regulations, this will in turn hold up installation of the network, meaning hundreds of
thousands of people will not have access to fast broadband and they, and the economy, will lose
out. Appropriate changes to legislation that impact on planning permission will contribute greatly
towards speeding up all commercial deployment of fibre broadband and the Government’s aims for
as wide a coverage as possible of the technology across the UK.
Why broadband matters: the economic benefits of high-speed broadband
High-speed broadband can transform local economies, businesses and households, whether in cities
or rural economies. A recent report by analysts Regeneris Consulting estimates that high-speed
broadband announced by BT across Norfolk and Suffolk, for example, will create almost £1.3bn in
GVA (gross value added, the measure of the value of goods and services produced in an economy)
over the next 15 years, or £86m annually, for that local economy. This is through improved business
performance, new businesses created and increased homeworking. In London, Regeneris estimates
a GVA of £19.8bn through high-speed broadband announced to date. Taken on a national scale,
every £1 invested in high-speed broadband creates nearly £15 in GVA for the UK economy.
Examples of the type of work businesses can carry out from even rural locations, enabled through
high-speed broadband, include supplying film content to hotels worldwide, the ability to offer hotel
and public-house customers guests with high-bandwidth wi-fi, remote monitoring through CCTV,
uploading and downloading big graphics files and running sophisticated ecommerce sites aimed at
customers worldwide. Audiences for these businesses are not just within their local economies, they
are not even just the UK; they are helping Britain export globally.
How the Growth and Infrastructure Bill will help
Clearly, high-speed broadband offers huge opportunities - but there is a basic barrier to realising
these: the existing prior notification planning requirement, where applied outside of Sites of Special
Scientific Interest, for siting of broadband cabinets. BT consults widely with local authorities and
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other stakeholders, and sites its street cabinets as sensitively as possible within quite narrow
constraints (ie, all high-speed broadband cabinets are ideally sited within 30-50m of the existing
cabinet serving homes with existing phone services, and at most 100m apart). However, Openreach,
which is responsible for installing the new network, frequently encounters difficulties such as:
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being asked for fees even just to meet with a local authority to discuss where cabinets are to
be sited
lack of consistency in applying planning principles between planning officers
lack of consultation from a local authority before it rejects an application
decision-making taken to the absolute deadline
planning rejections against the wishes of local residents and businesses
where there is consultation, information on economic benefits is often not provided.
Clearly these barriers have proved damaging to our ability to install the network, causing frustration
for communications providers, businesses and home consumers. They cause significant delays in
making the service available, drive up the cost of deployment and cause planned delivery to some
areas to be abandoned altogether, potentially wasting the huge potential gains for local economies.
It is simply not cost-effective, nor a good use of high-speed broadband investment, to incur extra
costs in order to overcome planning issues.
If this situation continues into the ‘final third’ it risks wasting public money - diverting money and
resources from the Government’s funding pot that could otherwise have been used to deploy the
network further and faster to dealing with bureaucracy and inappropriately applied planning rules.
The impact on deployment remains significant as a result of the current planning regime, and the
number of rejections is likely to increase significantly as deployment reaches further into rural areas,
given the higher proportion of conservation areas, etc. The net impact of this is that hundreds of
thousands of customers will be at risk of being excluded from high-speed broadband services where
planning constraint prevent deployment.
Conclusion
The Growth and Infrastructure Bill is urgently required in order to help the rollout of high-speed
broadband services and fulfil the plans central and local government are putting in place. A
sensitive, but consistent and uniform application of current street furniture planning regulations, as
clause 7 proposes, would help achieve this.
We would be happy to discuss these issues further. Further enquiries can be directed to David
Pincott, Head of Political Research, Policy and Briefing, BT Group plc.
Tel: 020 7356 6585/email: david.pincott@bt.com
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