The Superfast Cymru Successor Project

Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:47 pm on 20 June 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:47, 20 June 2018

Yes, absolutely, and, as I said when I was at the meeting in your constituency, we very much take that on board and so successor projects are being designed to go to specific properties. So, if you'll remember, the first one was a bit of a fishing pool: they could go to 690,000-plus properties across Wales—any property they wanted—because we had a massive problem when we started off that programme. Now we're down to the last 95,000 premises. So, what we've asked for in the next procurement is that it's targeted, so that those people who are successful in the successor programme, we will know exactly where they're going and why and how much that will cost. So, we will know both who's in and who’s out. For the people who are in, we'll be able to get a communications strategy, so, if there are delays and so on, we will know exactly what the issue was. And for the people who are out, we'll then start to work on bespoke plans for those. Because, I've been very clear: at the moment, with the gain share and the amount of money in, we haven't got quite enough money to get to absolutely everyone, although, with the intermediate investment programme that we're aware of now, we have had another £31 million to put into that, but it still won't be quite enough, so we will have to have those bespoke community solutions as well.