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Govt commits to spending £1m on broadband project legal costs
More than £1 million of legal contracts have been awarded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Labour MP Barry Gardiner submitted a written question that sought details of the legal contracts that have already been awarded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), even though little progress has so far been made on any of the UK's next-generation broadband pilot schemes.
Responding to the query, Tourism and Heritage Minister John Penrose explained government body Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) - which is managing the deployment of super-fast broadband in partnership with the DCMS - awarded the contracts last year.
"BDUK tendered for supply of legal services in April 2011 to support delivery of the broadband and related programmes," he said.
"The cumulative value of this contract will exceed £1 million by the end of the programmes in 2015. The period between the published opening of the tender and closure was four weeks."
According to PC Pro, a spokesperson from the DCMS was unable to explain why the legal bill is so large, but said: "It's a half a billion pound project, so there are large costs involved."
The money will go toward covering the legal costs, state aid applications, central advice and grant agreements racked up by the BDUK framework contract, which has been launched to support the government's goal of delivering the best super-fast broadband network in Europe.
While the legal contracts have been assigned, only one-third of local authority broadband plans have so far been given the green light to progress to the procurement stage. All draft broadband plans must be submitted to the government by the end of this month, or councils could stand to miss out on the public funding they have been provisionally allocated.
A national procurement is being planned by the government for areas that are not ready to progress with their deployments by the end of July.