6. Will the Leader of the House provide an update on broadband provision in south-east Wales? OAQ52548

Certainly. The Superfast Cymru scheme has, to date, facilitated the roll-out of superfast broadband access to over 230,000 homes and businesses across the region, delivering average speeds of over 70 Mbps and investing over £63 million.

Thank you. It was a pleasure to join you and the community in Michaelston-y-Fedw earlier this month for the launch of the village's ultrafast broadband hub. The community-led project is part-funded by the Welsh Government, and it's the first of its kind in Wales. It's been a real community effort, with residents digging chambers, laying ducts and fitting out communication hubs. The hard work has really paid off, and most of the village will soon have higher download speeds.

Michaelston-y-Fedw has been a real success, but I'm aware of several other issues with broadband speeds in other parts of my constituency. So, what's the Welsh Government doing to ensure that more households have access to superfast broadband and that the timescales are clearly communicated to people?

Yes, it was a great scheme. It was great to be there, wasn't it, to see the enthusiasm for it? Deputy Presiding Officer, if I could recommend that to all other communities across Wales—it's a scheme that was completely underpinned by the Welsh Government voucher schemes, both Access Broadband Cymru and the ultrafast voucher schemes. The village crowdfunded a part of it so that they could raise the speeds to a gigabit. They're hoping to roll it out to 70 or so users. They're hoping to get a return of around £20,000 a year once it's fully rolled out to invest in community projects across the village and upgrade the entire area.

There's absolutely nothing not to totally love about the scheme. It was completely underpinned as well by my broadband team, who worked, as was acknowledged on the day, tirelessly with them to ensure that all of the hurdles that they encountered were smoothed for them. But, I have to pay tribute to the dedication of the people working on it, who really did work very long hours to bring it to fruition.

It's a scheme we'd like to see replicated, although there are many other models of it. We're happy to support such a scheme right across Wales. As I said earlier, in terms of the future, I'm very disappointed I wasn't able to announce something today. We worked very hard to try to do so, but it's not been possible. We hope to be able to do it in the very near future.