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The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) directorate has posted another contract modification notice for Gigaclear’s Project Gigabit contract in East Gloucestershire (Lot 18), which slightly increases the planned roll-out of full fibre broadband (FTTP) by 325 premises and yet manages to reduce the contract value by £777,041 (public investment).
The original Lot 18 contract was first awarded all the way back in February 2024 (here) and was initially valued at £16.6m (state aid), with a goal of extending gigabit-capable broadband to an additional 4,400 premises in remote rural areas of the county. But it’s gone through several contract modifications since then, which has shrunk the planned deployment.
According to the latest BDUK data for August 2028 (here), Gigaclear’s Lot 18 contract was expected to cover 3,550 premises in hard-to-reach parts of East Gloucestershire and they’ve already completed the build to 2,070 of those (58% completion). However, such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons.