Surrey County Council has announced that it has failed to meet its target to deliver a Superfast Broadband service to almost 100% of residential properties in Surrey. Furthermore it is planning to drop this target following a County Council report which has revealed that 20,000 Surrey properties are unable to access Superfast Broadband.

The County Council, however, plans to increase the number of premises able to receive Superfast Broadband through a second phase of subsidised infrastructure rollout but it will not achieve 100% coverage and the final rollout will be delivered two years late.

The original plan has been watered down to reflect the fact that insufficient funding has been allocated by the County Council to complete the necessary work and the introduction of value for money criteria which will now be applied when the County Council decides which properties will receive Superfast Broadband.

The County Council’s alternative strategy for those properties that cannot receive Superfast Broadband is to investigate satellite, wireless or mobile services or to co-ordinate and help self-fund a community initiative. This shows that the County Council still fails to understand the problem as rural areas without Superfast Broadband often do not have a mobile signal and therefore the alternative means of provision do not exist.

In this digital age, Superfast Broadband is a necessity to access Government information and services. It is a basic utility which we believe must be provided to all Surrey premises. Surrey Liberal Democrats have thus called for the County Council to provide more funding to enable 100% Superfast Broadband coverage in Surrey and for the work to be accelerated so that residents do not have to wait two years for this vital service.