6. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on broadband connectivity for rural communities on Anglesey? OAQ51810

We have 32,081 premises that have been provided with access to fast broadband on Anglesey under the Superfast Cymru project, which equates to 91 per cent of eligible premises.

Thank you very much. My question today comes directly from the clerk of Bodedern council. I ask it because it's pertinent for so many of our rural communities, and I'm grateful to the clerk for contacting me. I will read:

Significant problems with broadband connectivity exist in a number of areas of the community, which is having a very negative impact on many individuals, families and businesses. For example, many farmers have to send their grant applications online, but I'm aware of a number of farmers who are unable to do this because of the broadband connection, and because of this they are disadvantaged. They have attended open sessions to express their concerns, but to date they have only received the response that their concerns have been noted, and haven't received any offer of improvement or any plan for the future.

There is then a question for me, which I pass on to you: can you confirm what you suggest should be done to assist rural communities that are suffering these negative impacts?

I'm not too sure what the specific issue there is, but I'm more than happy to have a good look to see what it is. We are aware that there are some fibre-to-the-premises connection problems in Anglesey and some parts of the north-west of Wales. It may be that you're caught in one of those, but I'm afraid I don't have that information to hand, so I'm very happy to, perhaps, exchange correspondence with you.

I am in Anglesey in the not-too-distant future, so I'd also, if I can manage to fit it in, like to come along to the community and actually see for myself what the issues are and get one of our exploitation teams to have a specific look to see whether we can solve those problems. As I say, Anglesey has a very good percentage of coverage, so I'm surprised to find that there's that much of a problem. I suspect that we've got to look at a very specific issue there. 

Analysis published by Which? in June last year found that Anglesey was thirteenth out of the 20 worst places for broadband in the UK, behind only Powys and Monmouthshire in Wales. On 30 January, you announced the first details of your new strategy to help to make fast and reliable broadband available to every property in Wales, with three lots going out to tender. The related tender document is now available online, stating only that the aim is to deliver superfast broadband services to as many premises as possible in Wales. So, when will the tender for north-west Wales—the lot 1 tender for north-west Wales—open and close? And why has the target for every property in Wales been removed?

What we're trying to do is we're trying to test the market to see—. This is always a balance between numbers and getting to communities that have a specific recorded need. I've said this a number of times before: it's a real balance for us to know whether we should just get past as many premises as possible, regardless of whether those people have contacted us to say that they want it, or whether we should be looking to specific individuals and small groups of people who have indicated that they are very desperate to get the connection because that's patchy across Wales.

Part of the process of the tender is to see what's available for what price. We've asked the market to tell us what they're able to do, and then we can make specific bespoke solutions for places that have either indicated already that they want that or are left out of the market calculation. So, I'm afraid it's quite a complex procurement to run.

We're also looking to see what we can do with local authority partners to pick up some of the issues in some of their areas. So, there's no simple answer to that question, but we're basically just trying to get to as many people as possible for the money that we have available.