To ask the Minister for the Economy to detail (i) any discussions she has had with Project Gigabit in relation to expanding the provision of superfast broadband to rural areas excluded from Project Stratum; and (ii) the number of rural properties in Northern Ireland, and East Londonderry that will remain without superfast broadband after the completion of Project Stratum.

Project Gigabit is a £5 billion project managed by Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), aimed at bringing next generation gigabit broadband to more than one million hard to reach homes and businesses. As part of Project Gigabit, the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme is being relaunched, with up to £210 million to give people in eligible rural areas immediate financial help to get gigabit speeds. My Department will continue to engage with DCMS to discuss how these schemes will benefit Northern Ireland.

Project Stratum was developed to improve access to broadband services for those premises unable to access speeds of 30 Mbps (Superfast broadband, as defined by Ofcom) or greater. Following an Open Market Review exercise and a public consultation, a target intervention area of approximately 79,000 was identified.

My Department’s aim has always been to bring a solution to as many of these premises as possible. However, with the funding available, it was not possible to address all premises in the target intervention area, and 2,517 eligible premises are currently out of scope of the project. Of those, 185 are within the East Londonderry Constituency.

My Department is seeking to address these premises. Discussions have already been advanced with DCMS and, now with Fibrus Networks appointed as the contractor, we are working to identify the solutions and costs to maximise coverage across the target intervention area. The outcome of this work will be shared at the earliest opportunity.

If there are other premises that have not been included in the target intervention area for which the data held by my Department is found to be incorrect, my officials will examine the eligibility of those premises and explore the possibility of bringing them into the Project Stratum intervention area, where appropriate. However, this would be subject to the necessary funding being available to cover the cost of those additional premises, and to value for money considerations.