Agenda item

To consider a report by Councillor Hugh Evans, Leader and Lead Member for the Economy and Corporate Governance (copy enclosed) updating Cabinet on the digital work carried out to date by the North Wales Economic Ambition Board and seeking approval of authorisations for the work going forward.

RESOLVED that Cabinet –

(a)       adopts the North Wales Connectivity Strategy;

(b)       approves Denbighshire County Council’s role as Lead Body on behalf of the North Wales Economic Ambition Board for the LFFN Project and agrees that the Council enters into a suitable Inter Authority Agreement with the other partner bodies in respect of the LFFN Project, and

(d)       authorises the Corporate Director Economy and Public Realm in consultation with the S151 Officer, Monitoring Officer and Leader to agree the final terms of the Inter Authority Agreement.

In the absence of Councillor Hugh Evans, Councillor Richard Mainon presented the report updating Cabinet on the digital work carried out to date by the North Wales Economic Ambition Board (NWEAB) and seeking approval of authorisations for the work going forward.

The NWEAB had approved a Digital Connectivity Strategy for the region and the Local Full Fibre Network (LFFN) project was an important project to help deliver that Strategy.  The Board had agreed to develop and submit a regional bid to the UK Government’s LFFN Programme Challenge Fund and that Denbighshire County Council would be the lead authority for the project.  The LFFN Bid had been approved in principle by UK Government and the proposal currently stood at approximately £9m investment in the region.  The investment would be directed to improving connectivity across the public sector resulting in wider enhancement of networks serving communities.  Cabinet was asked to formally adopt the Digital Connectivity Strategy and approve the Council’s role in delivering the LFFN project.

Councillor Mainon highlighted the benefits of the project which would deploy a full fibre network throughout North Wales linking up to 400 public buildings including schools, libraries, local government offices and also involved the Health Board and GP surgeries.  The project presented a positive step in terms of bringing much needed digital infrastructure into the region and Denbighshire was particularly well placed to benefit with 95 of the premises to be upgraded located in the county.  There was also huge potential for ancillary benefits to other properties as part of that process.  The focus of the report was improving public sector connectivity and there were other digital schemes working in parallel to address digital requirements in other sectors.  The Economic and Business Development (EBD) Officer added that the intention was to commence the project in March 2019 for completion in March 2021 which was a challenging timescale but given the procurement route arranged by Welsh Government there was confidence that it would be delivered.

Cabinet welcomed the project and noted the positive benefits across the region.  In response to questions Cabinet was advised that –

·        the potential scope of public sector building upgrades had been detailed in the Strategy however the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport had recently asked that further sites be proposed with a view to further extending full fibre into rural areas and a review would be carried out in that regard

·        in terms of health partners the technology would enable them to modernise their services and build further resilience – whilst they may choose to make Wi-Fi available in waiting areas they would not be compelled to do so.  There would also be huge benefits to other public buildings such as schools and libraries

·        scrutiny arrangements would be carried out locally at this stage and the project could be called in for scrutiny by the Council; there was potential for regional scrutiny of regional projects in the second phase of the Growth Deal.

Questions were also invited from non-Cabinet members and Councillor Mainon and the EBD Officer responded to those further questions as follows –

·        regarding calls for other community buildings to benefit from the project it was confirmed that the distribution of smaller community/town council buildings across the region was potentially a means of deploying full fibre further into more rural areas – all of the work identified by the project would be subject to survey work by Openreach on a quarterly basis which would identify the extent and location of that impact on communities.  Whilst much of the broadband work in Wales had been overseen by the Welsh Government, the Council would have greater control to an extent on work in the county as part of this project

·        with regard to partner contributions every participating organisation would be investing in hardware at the actual site to enable themselves to connect – this included the Health Board and GP surgeries which accounted for a large proportion of the 400 sites identified

·        the scope of the project and building upgrades included figures of premises passed at 50m and 200m which was the UK Government’s model of proposed impact – however the number of premises that could access the infrastructure was dependent on the local network design which was not uniform – once Openreach had conducted the survey work there would be greater clarity on those figures which could potentially be higher or lower than the report figures.

Concerns were also raised by some members regarding poor digital connectivity experienced by residents and businesses in their particular ward areas.  Councillor Mainon reiterated that the project subject of the report focused on improving public sector connectivity and there were other schemes currently being developed which would focus on other digital requirements.  There was much sympathy with those blighted by poor connectivity and the issue had been recognised and identified as a priority with the Council’s Corporate Plan with work ongoing to effect a solution.

RESOLVED that Cabinet –

(a)       adopts the North Wales Connectivity Strategy;

(b)       approves Denbighshire County Council’s role as Lead Body on behalf of the North Wales Economic Ambition Board for the LFFN Project and agrees that the Council enters into a suitable Inter Authority Agreement with the other partner bodies in respect of the LFFN Project, and

(d)       authorises the Corporate Director Economy and Public Realm in consultation with the S151 Officer, Monitoring Officer and Leader to agree the final terms of the Inter Authority Agreement.