Hampshire County Council set to slash spending on rural broadband

HAMPSHIRE County Council is set to slash spending on rural broadband in the coming year.

The budget for 2023/24 is planned to be £5,000 – compared to £130,000 in 2022/23, writes Natalia Forero of the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Cllr Jackie Porter asked during a committee meeting why the budget for rural broadband is decreasing so drastically.

"This matter needs to take into account because people in rural Hampshire are at great disadvantages," she said.

Cllr Porter pointed out seven communities in her division, Itchen Valley, have been waiting for broadband for a long time, and added that was "much more to do by the hand of the council".

Liberal Democrat members highlighted some areas of rural Hampshire were already behind urban ones in terms of broadband.

Cllr Adrian Collett said: “People in quite a few parts of Hampshire are getting super superfast broadband – better than anything that’s on the market.

"That’s all very well where there’s an imperative but could put rural areas even further behind. We can’t take our eyes off the ball.”

Rob Carr, HCC director of corporate operations, told the meeting they are trying to "plug the gap" by using the national gigabit project, launched by the government in 2018 to help hard-to-reach communities access gigabit-capable broadband by offering investment vouchers.

The government has already spent up to £210m to build on the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, open to homes and businesses in rural locations that have an existing broadband speed of less than 100Mbps.

Since 2018 more than 500,000 rural premises had joined the project, according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.