On June 25th 2019, DCC Head of Economy, Enterprise and Skills, Keri Denton provided an Update Report on Connecting Devon & Somerset to the DCC Corporate Infrastructure and Regulatory Services Scrutiny Committee which contains the paragraph:
As a consequence of the delay to the Gigaclear roll out, CDS working closely with the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, (DCMS) has sought an extension for
£18.7millions of Government capital grant to March 2023. This has been supported as a
priority by DCMS and has benefited from the support of local authority partners, the LEPs
and Members of Parliament. In recognition of representations made by DCMS and CDS,
there has been positive responses from HM Treasury which is finalising an agreement for a
funding extension with DCMS as part of the Spending Review process.
Please confirm whether or not the CDS Board had a confirmed guarantee from DCMS and HM Treasury that they had unfettered access to the £18.7M of Government capital grant to 2023, as mentioned in the above paragraph, on September 11, 2019 when the CDS Board chose to cancel all five Phase 2 contracts with Gigaclear Ltd.
CDS has already provided public detailed information regarding the programme’s funding position, through a series of Frequently Asked Questions on its website. These can be found online at:
https://www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk/gigaclear-termination-faqs/
In particular, we would refer you to Questions 4, 5 and 6 and their respective answers