AROUND £2.5 million will be made available to further extend the reach of high speed fibre broadband across Cumbria as part of the Connecting Cumbria project, it was announced today.

The additional amount is from funding that BT is making available to extend Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) projects across the UK as a result of the success of the projects in delivering higher than expected take-up levels.

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The money is being made available to Cumbria County Council to reinvest in providing further superfast broadband coverage to even more homes and businesses and much earlier than originally planned. 

Connecting Cumbria is currently working with BT to obtain the extra money from the national reward scheme and to decide how it could be used to extend coverage throughout the county, targeting many of those properties in hard to reach places.

Cllr David Southward, Cumbria County Council’s Cabinet Member responsible for economic development, said: “This money is a bit like a reward for delivering superfast fibre broadband on track and on time and surpassing the original expectations on how many people will be signing up to fibre. It looks like we’re going to burst through that 20 per cent take-up figure into around a third of properties, so BDUK are allowing us to reinvest even more money into getting to more of the hardest to reach properties.”

Steve Edwards, BT Group director for NGA, added: “The fibre broadband roll-out is a real success story, and we’re delighted to be able to share that success with Cumbria by making £2.5 million available to help connect some of the hardest to reach homes and businesses. The open network which we’re rolling out brings real choice to communities and this is helping to drive take-up which is key to the programme’s future.” 

The £2.5 million is being made available as a result of a “gain share” clause in the phase 1 BDUK contract BT agreed with Cumbria County Council that allows the funding BT has received to be reinvested over a number of years into further coverage if take-up is better than the 20 per cent expected in BT’s original business case. 

This announcement is bringing forward that investment and making it available much earlier than planned. The higher take-up rate to date has resulted in BT making a new business case assumption of reaching 30 per cent take-up in these areas.