The Public Accounts Committee has warned there has been little progress in delivering superfast broadband by the Government outside what has been achieved by private firms, while there is no detailed plan for connecting homes in areas deemed not to be commercially viable for rollouts.

The report said MPs are not convinced the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will meet even its downgraded targets for the increasingly critical rollout of super-fast, “gigabit” broadband. A DCMS spokesperson said in response it was "misleading" to suggest the Government was reliant on the commercial sector and is on course to reach its target.

In 2020, DCMS accepted that its original plan for delivering nationwide gigabit broadband across the country by 2025 was unachievable and revised that target down to 85 per cent coverage by 2025.

Rural areas are being left behind when it comes to broadband rollout, a report has suggested.

While the proportion of properties with access to gigabit broadband increased from 40 per cent to 57 per cent between May and October 2021, the report said this was largely down to Virgin Media O2.

The report noted that the DCMS goal of full coverage by 2030 “does not cover the very hardest to reach areas, which include around 134,000 premises” and it has no detailed plan in place for reaching communities where it is not commercially viable to do so. The high-cost of rollout in these areas means alternative technologies such as satellite may be needed to improve internet quality.

The committee said it it concerned the Government’s current focus on “accelerating coverage through rollout by commercial operators rather than by prioritising those areas it knows are hardest to reach risks some of the areas that need improved connectivity most, being once again left behind”.

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Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “DCMS’s planning and project management here show all the signs of the previous rollout – that the focus will continue to be on the easier to reach areas and there is still no clear plan for the hardest to reach communities.

“DCMS couldn’t really explain how broadband has got as far as it has in this critical national strategy, beyond ‘thanks to Virgin Media’, and incredibly it still doesn’t have a real plan for getting the rest of the way to its own downgraded targets.

“What DCMS does know full well is it can’t rely on the private sector to get fast broadband to the hardest to reach, excluded and rural areas, and despite its repeated promises to do exactly that we are apparently little nearer to closing ‘the great digital divide’ developing across the UK nor addressing the social and economic inequality it brings with it.”

The report recommends that the DCMS starts publishing statistics every three months showing the regional and national breakdown of progress against its gigabit coverage target.

A DCMS spokesperson said: "It is misleading to suggest we are reliant on the commercial sector to hit our target which we remain on track to meet.

"We are investing £5 billion so hard-to-reach areas can get gigabit speeds, have already upgraded 600,000 premises, and in three years national coverage has rocketed from six per cent to 65 per cent.

"Our policies and investment also mean 97 per cent of premises can access superfast broadband which meets people's current needs and helped us through the pandemic."

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Little Government progress in tackling 'digital divide' over broadband access, MPs warn