The Constituencies without hope of NGA

The release of the Ordinance Survey data allowed me to play around with the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) data on where they believe next generation broadband is most likely to appear. Here’s my league table of the top 25 Parliamentary Constituencies least likely to see investment in broadband:

The Red, Amber, Green columns are the percentage of each constituency unlikely, possibly, or probably a target for investment in “superfast” broadband.

There are, according to the DCLG model, 56 constituencies where they don’t expect any investment including the Speaker’s constituency in Buckingham. The leaders of the three main parties do better:

• Gordon Brown – 50% of his Kirkcaldy constituency is likely to see investment
• David Cameron – 55% of his Witney constituency is likely to see investment but the largely rural areas outside the market town won’t
• Nick Clegg – 90% of his Sheffield constituency is likely to see investment, not least through the Digital Region project

As for the candidates who may be responsible for digital policy after the election:

• Stephen Timms serves one the hottest broadband constituencies in the UK – East Ham is 100% Green
• Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey’s Surrey and Oxfordshire constituencies are both good in parts but rural areas mean broadband have’s and have not’s
• Lynne Featherstone, chair of the Lib Dems Technology Board, serves another hot broadband area – Wood Green in London is 100% Green

Other names of note on the list include:

• Social media convert John Presctott and Home Secretary, Alan Johnson appear at 2 and 3 on the list of NGA notspots due to the peculiarity of Hull
• East Yorkshire Tory MP and civil liberties campaigner, David Davis is 5th on the list with just 3% of his constituency possibly a target of investment
• Liberal cheeky-boy Lembit Opik and past leader Charles Kennedy are high on the list because they serve rural areas of Wales and Scotland
• Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP’s (who don’t mention broadband in their manifesto) serves the 27th least popular target for broadband investment
• And leader of Plaid in Westminster, Elfyn Llwyd tops the list of NGA notpsots in the DCLG model as the constituency least likely to see broadband investment

To see how your constituency fairs, download the full list here in CSV format.

Think broadband’s important for the next Government? Click here for a quick breakdown of the main parties views on technology.

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