‘Over a fifth will not benefit from broadband investment’

The Government has spent £500m on projects to improve broadband speeds in remote parts of the UK which would not otherwise be reached by commercial firms, with a further £250m of investment promised.

North Yorkshire was made a pilot area for the roll-out and it has almost finished its £35m project, with more than half the county’s telephone cabinets having now been upgraded to offer “superfast” speeds of at least 25Mbs. By October the county will have hit the Government’s target of 90 per cent coverage.

But Conservative MP Anne McIntosh claims more than a fifth of her constituency, which is one of the most rural in the UK, will still be left with slow broadband speeds at the end of the project.

“Thirsk, Malton and Filey has the poorest coverage broadband of any constituency in North Yorkshire,” Miss McIntosh said.

“The cover of 25 Mbps by 2016 will be only 78 per cent, behind William Hague in Richmond with 79 per cent. The reason for the poor coverage is the rural nature of the constituency, sparse population and distance from the exchange and the cabinet.

“This begs in turn the question as to what support and assistance the Government, BDUK or BT will offer those who find themselves in these deeply rural areas where both the level of broadband penetration as well as speed is extremely poor.

“Having established that 22 per cent of my constituency will have poor broadband at slow speed, we need a little more honesty in the debate and the chance to establish more of a level playing field in broadband provision across the country.”

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee (EFRA), which Miss McIntosh chairs, has called on the Government to reverse its priorities between now and 2015/16 so that instead of improving an already adequate service, it focuses on those areas with poor speeds and to be clear which areas which will not receive superfast broadband so they can seek alternative arrangements.