Official Statistics

Bulletin: BDUK delivery performance, annual: April 2024 to March 2025

Published 4 September 2025

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/bduk-delivery-performance-annual-april-2024-to-march-2025/bulletin-bduk-delivery-performance-annual-april-2024-to-march-2025

1. About this release 

This annual statistics report presents how many premises in the United Kingdom have received a gigabit-capable broadband connection as a result of BDUK subsidy. The figures cover premises that received gigabit-capable coverage through Building Digital UK (BDUK) subsidy between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. We also present revised figures from earlier time periods. 

This is the first annual release of this series of official statistics. For questions or suggestions to improve the relevance of this report, its overall readability, or the format and content of the tables to ensure they meet user needs, please contact us at statistics@bduk.gov.uk. 

2. Headline findings 

We estimate that BDUK interventions delivered 152,700 premises with gigabit-capable coverage between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. A cumulative estimate of 1,227,000 premises have received gigabit-capable coverage by BDUK’s gigabit programmes since their inception. 

Of the premises delivered by BDUK between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025: 

  • 41% (62,760) were delivered under the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy scheme (GIS, Gigabit contracts) 
  • 37% (55,740) were delivered by vouchers 
  • 22% (34,200) were delivered by Superfast and Hubs 
  • 89% (135,900) of premises delivered between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 were in rural areas.  
  • 91% (139,000) of premises delivered between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 were classified as residential premises and 8% (12,000) were classified as commercial premises. 
  • The highest delivery was in England (67%, 101,800 premises) followed by Scotland (23%, 34,700 premises), Wales (7%, 10,700 premises), and Northern Ireland (4%, 5,500 premises). 

3. Overview 

This bulletin presents annual official statistics on the delivery performance of BDUK (Building Digital UK) from April 2024 to March 2025. It includes breakdowns by: 

  • Time period 
  • Geographies 
  • Urban/rural classification 
  • Commercial/residential classification 
  • Whether the premises are in the Ofcom premises base 
  • Whether or not the premises had superfast coverage (minimum 30Mbit/s) before BDUK subsidised delivery  
  • Intervention type  

These statistics are designated as official statistics and produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. 

4. Findings

4.1 Time period and intervention 

BDUK delivered gigabit coverage to 152,700 premises between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025, 2,600 more than the previous financial year ending 31 March 2024. This year saw a decrease in vouchers and Superfast delivery which was offset by an increase in delivery though Gigabit contracts.  

The total number of premises delivered by BDUK to the end of 31 March 2025 is 1,227,000 premises.  

Figure 1: Delivery by year and BDUK intervention, UK, 2021/22 to 2024/25

4.2 Geographic breakdowns 

Of the 152,700 premises delivered between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025, 67% (101,800 premises) were delivered in England, followed by Scotland (23%, 34,700 premises), Wales (7%, 10,700 premises), and Northern Ireland (4%, 5,500 premises). 

Figure 2: Delivery by Country, UK, 2021/22 to 2024/25

The region in England with the largest amount of delivery between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 was the South West with 23,400 premises delivered. This was followed by the East of England (15,600), Yorkshire and the Humber (13,300). 

Figure 3: Delivery by Region, England, 2021/22 to 2024/25

The local authority district with the most delivery between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 was Highland (9,220), followed by Cornwall with 7,700, Cumberland (6,750), and Northumberland (4,810). 

Table 1: Top 10 local authority districts by number of premises passed, UK, 2024/25

Local Authority District Premises passed
Highland 9,220
Cornwall 7,700
Cumberland 6,750
Northumberland 4,810
East Suffolk 4,780
Dorset 4,710
Broadland 4,430
New Forest 4,260
Dumfries and Galloway 3,910
Wiltshire 3,620

From 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, 135,900 premises (89% of BDUK’s delivery) were in rural areas. This is in line with the recent trends and is primarily due to the nature of uncommercial premises that are targeted by BDUK interventions.  

Figure 4: Delivery by grouped rural/urban classification, UK, 2021/22 to 2024/25

5. By premises characteristics 

BDUK delivered primarily to residential premises from April 2024 to March 2025. At 91% (139,000), this is in line compared to previous years. 

Figure 5: BDUK delivery by premises type, 2021/22 to 2024/25 

In line with recent downward trends, an estimated 31% of BDUK’s delivery from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 was to premises without access to a minimum of 30 MBit/s connection speed (sub-Superfast). This is primarily due to the change in delivery proportions of our interventions; the Superfast programme exclusively targeted premises without Superfast broadband, whereas Gigabit contracts target both sub-Superfast premises and premises with Superfast availability. 

Figure 6: BDUK delivery by availability of Superfast speeds, UK, 2021/22 to 2024/25

6. Publication information  

6.1 Data sources 

We used the following data sources for this annual (1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025) performance report:  

6.2 Changes from previous releases  

This is BDUK’s first annual official statistics publication, publishing delivery performance from April 2024 to March 2025, and revising earlier time series. These figures build on the figures previously published in the BDUK delivery performance, quarterly: April 2024 to December 2024 official statistics. 

We have not included the table showing contractual delivery by contract and supplier in this release. BDUK would like to release more timely data to support its objective of releasing transparent and timely information about its programme delivery. We will therefore release contractual delivery information as management information on a monthly basis in a transparent and regular way.

BDUK updates its historical time series with each release. This is because BDUK works closely with suppliers to improve the quality of their reporting; when improvements are made, we may receive revised information that alters the original delivery date of a premises or corrects the number of premises passed. This has resulted in minor changes (such as the net 3,200 premises increase in delivery for Q3 2024/25 due to more up-to-date Scottish Superfast submissions and the inclusion of more up to date RFS data) to the historical data, with movement between interventions and delivery periods. 

6.3 Known issues   

BDUK is currently working on a methodology to improve the identification of Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) for addresses which currently do not have an associated one; this will improve the accuracy of our counting methodology. BDUK is also investigating its vouchers data quality. We have identified that our primary approach to collecting vouchers data has diminished in quality, and may be resulting in a small underestimate of vouchers delivery for recent months.

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