Seaside towns are suffering because of poor broadband

SEASIDE towns suffer from poor access to high-quality broadband, peers have said.

A report by the House of Lords select committee on regenerating seaside towns found that substandard internet connections meant many coastal areas were being left behind.

The committee said coastal settlements that thrived as pleasure resorts in the 19th century have been neglected for “too long” and should once again be “celebrated as places that can provide attractive environments”.

The report’s authors spoke to a number of councils responsible for seaside towns across Britain. Many claimed they were being unfairly overlooked by ministers who were more concerned with boosting capacity in urban areas.

“It was suggested that investment in mobile and broadband infrastructure in coastal communities lagged considerably behind that being made in urban areas and that this was worsening economic disadvantages already felt in these communities,” the report said.

The committee called on ministers to promote initiatives to support digital connectivity. Doing so, it said, would provide an opportunity to “overcome the challenges of peripherality in coastal areas”.

It came as an Ofcom boss said innovative technology was needed to bring fast broadband to remote rural areas.

The UK Government wants 95 per cent of the country to be covered but this will not be achieved solely through Ofcom’s plans, Mansoor Hanif, its chief technology officer, told MSPS at a hearing in Scotland. The current deadline for the government target, which is expected to boost UK GDP by £75 billion, is the end of 2022.

Mr Hanif said the problem of parts of the country having no mobile signal at all is “really hard to solve”.

“The reality is, it is improving but clearly not fast enough,” he said.