North Tyneside Council has announced plans to surpass the government's super-fast broadband target while foregoing any public money.

Government body Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) offered £880,000 of state aid to the local authority to help meet the national goal of delivering speeds of at least 25Mbps to 90 per cent of homes and businesses by 2015, with minimum download rates of 2Mbps for remaining properties.

However, elected mayor for North Tyneside Linda Arkley explained in a letter to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt that the council is actually in a position to exceed this target as it has already been active in delivering super-fast broadband.

Thanks to BT's nationwide next-generation broadband deployment programme, 91 per cent of the borough will be able to access super-fast speeds by 2015 without any government cash, she revealed.

Download capabilities of 2Mbps will be extended to the remaining nine per cent of North Tyneside, although the council claimed these areas are mostly protected open spaces and therefore are not in great need of high-speed broadband.

Mrs Arkley insisted she can give a "firm commitment" to locals that the council is on track to deliver super-fast broadband by 2015 to the communities that need it most.

"In this instance, given the pressures on resources at the present time, we felt that the benefits of increasing the coverage of super-fast broadband across the remaining nine per cent of the borough would be limited and therefore a low priority when deciding how best to spend council taxpayers' money," the elected mayor added.

While North Tyneside Council will not be applying for state aid, those local authorities that are still submitting funding bids to the BDUK framework only have until the end of this month to hand in their draft broadband plans.

A final strategy must then be agreed with the government by the end of April.

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06th February 2012

I have not heard of another Local Authority where the target is below the 90 percent promised by the UK Government. Excepting the combined efforts of Devon and Somerset County Councils with 85 percent. 5 percent equates to tens of thousands of premises not being included. If the promises are to be believed...