Superfast broadband: England gets £295m to fund fibre rollouts
Find out how much your county is getting...
England is getting the lion's share of a £530m pot created by the government destined to help fund superfast broadband rollouts to underserved areas.
Superfast broadband: The government has announced the funding allocations for English and Scottish countiesPhoto: Shutterstock
The £530m kitty has been created to help finance the rollout of 25Mbps+ broadband to areas - typically rural - where the market won't deploy superfast connectivity of its own accord, with the aim of getting 90 per cent of the UK able to access such speeds by 2015. The fund is also being used to cover the government's universal service commitment to ensure everyone in the UK has access to at least 2Mbps broadband.
Counties in England will get a total of £294.8m from the government's superfast pot, while Scotland has been allocated £68.8m, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced today.
The government has also published details of funding allocations for each county in England - see page two for the full list.
The counties in England with the biggest allocations include Devon and Somerset (£31.32m), North Yorkshire (£17.84m) and Cumbria (£17.13m). London will not receive any funding because the government believes it can be served by the private sector.
In order to access the investment pots, local authorities in England need to draw up a broadband delivery plan and also match the government's investment with European, their own or private funding. Counties in other regions of the UK will be allocated funding by their regional governments, according to a DCMS spokesman.
The remainder of the £530m kitty - some £105.1m - has been set aside as a contingency fund, the spokesman said, adding that the spare cash may also be used to help fund additional broadband-related projects, such as the Rural Community Broadband Fund set up by Defra to help expand broadband rollouts in rural parts of England.
Follow this link to see the full list of broadband funding allocations to counties in England
Bedfordshire
Bedford, Central Bedfordshire, Luton: £1,060,000
Berkshire
Bracknell Forest, Reading, Slough, West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead, Wokingham: £1,430,000
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes: £2,100,000
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire, Peterborough: £6,750,000
Cheshire
Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, Warrington: £3,240,000
Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
Cornwall, Isles of Scilly: £0 (presumed covered by BT broadband measure)
Cumbria
Cumbria: £17,130,000
Derbyshire
Derbyshire, Derby: £7,390,000
Devon and Somerset
Devon, Plymouth, Torbay, Somerset, North Somerset: £31,320,000
Dorset
Dorset, Bournemouth, Poole: £9,440,000
Durham
County Durham, Gateshead: £7,790,000
East Sussex
East Sussex, Brighton and Hove: £10,640,000
Essex
Essex, Southend-on-Sea, Thurrock: £6,460,000
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire: £8,070,000
Greater London
Greater London: £0 (presumed covered by private sector)
Greater Manchester
Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan: £990,000
Hampshire and the Isle of Wight
Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton: £8,420,000
Herefordshire
County Of Herefordshire: £6,350,000
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire: £1,110,000
Humber
City Of Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, North East Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire: £8,540,000 (subject to revision - not all KCOM data available yet)
Kent
Kent, Medway: £9,870,000
Lancashire
Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool: £10,830,000
Leicestershire and Rutland
Leicestershire, Leicester, Rutland: £3,880,000
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire: £14,310,000
Merseyside
Knowsley, Liverpool, St. Helens, Sefton, Wirral: £5,460,000
Norfolk
Norfolk: £15,440,000
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire: £4,080,000
Northumberland
Northumberland: £7,030,000
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire, York: £17,840,000
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire, Nottingham: £4,250,000
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire: £3,860,000
Shropshire
Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin: £8,210,000
South Yorkshire
Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield: £0 (presumed covered by Digital Region Limited)
Staffordshire
Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent: £7,440,000
Suffolk
Suffolk: £11,680,000
Surrey
Surrey: £1,310,000
Tees Valley
Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton-on-Tees: £770,000
Tyne and Wear
Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland: £3,420,000
Warwickshire
Warwickshire, Coventry, Solihull: £4,070,000
West of England
Bath and North East Somerset, City of Bristol, South Gloucestershire: £1,430,000
West Midlands
Birmingham, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton: £630,000
West Sussex
West Sussex: £6,260,000
West Yorkshire
Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield: £6,340,000
Wiltshire
Wiltshire, Swindon: £4,900,000
Worcestershire
Worcestershire: £3,350,00