Figures & sources
Every statistic used across WIRES, with the primary source behind it. We checked every figure on this page against its original publication in July 2026 — corrections made during that check are noted inline. Numbers move; check the linked source before quoting anything in a briefing, council question, or press enquiry.
How to use this page
Each row shows a figure as it appears on the site, which page(s) use it, the primary source, and a caveat if one exists. If you're re-checking the site's accuracy, this is the list to work through — set a reminder to review it every few months, since regulator and government figures move on their own schedule regardless of ours. Entries marked as corrected also appear on our Corrections page.
Social tariffs & broadband affordability
1 in 12 qualifying UK households (≈532,000 of 6.2m) use a social tariff
Used on: Home · Why it matters · Get help · Who is acting? · News
8.6% is the precise figure; "1 in 12" is a fair rounding. A news article previously said "4-8 million" eligible instead of 6.2m — that range conflated an older, smaller Universal Credit caseload figure with a separate, broader "affordability hardship" statistic; corrected to 6.2m for consistency with the rest of the site.
70% of people on benefits have never heard that social tariffs exist
Used on: Home · Why it matters · Who is acting?
Corrected from a previously-published 55% — that number didn't match any Ofcom awareness-tracking wave. Ofcom's own series has moved 84% → 69% → 53% → 69% → 70% since 2022, so re-check this one every time Ofcom publishes.
A social tariff can save an eligible household around £200 a year
Used on: Why it matters
Corrected from a previously-published "£12/month overpay" figure, which was not a real Ofcom statistic.
UK Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme: up to £3,500 (business) / £1,500 (residential)
Used on: Get help
Corrected from a previously-published £4,500 business figure — £4,500 is the combined/group-project cap, not the per-business voucher. These values change periodically; re-check before quoting.
Scottish broadband coverage (R100)
Ofcom's Telecoms Access Review 2026-31 set the full-fibre repair standard for "Area 3" (places with no realistic prospect of a rival network) at 81% of repairs within one working day and 96% within 11 working days; Consumer Scotland had asked for 83% and 98%. More than 30% of Scottish postcodes are in Area 3, against 18% across the UK
Used on: News: Ofcom's rural repair target
Corrected: our news item of 27 September 2026 said Ofcom's final rules kept the one-working-day repair target at 79%, and that Scotland accounts for more than 30% of the UK's Area 3 postcodes. Both were wrong. 79% was Ofcom's consultation proposal; its final decision was 81%, the level Openreach was already achieving, with Ofcom declining the higher standards Consumer Scotland and Sky asked for. The 30% figure is the share of Scottish postcodes that fall within Area 3, not Scotland's share of the UK total. The article's headline, summary and text have been corrected.
R100 is a £697m programme; over 100,000 premises connected
Used on: Get help
Premises-connected count moves roughly monthly as Openreach builds — treat any static number as a snapshot, not a live figure.
R100 full build completion expected March 2028
Used on: Get help · Beyond broadband
Has slipped from an original 2021 target before — treat as the current official position, not a guarantee.
15.1% of Scottish residents do not use fixed broadband at all
Used on: Beyond broadband
Not a headline number Ofcom itself publishes in prose — it's a cross-tab the Scottish Government derived from Ofcom's raw data. Cite the gov.scot report, not "Ofcom" alone.
76% of connected businesses report increased productivity from R100; around two-thirds of residents feel more connected
Used on: News
Confirmed against the actual evaluation report — these are real, correctly-cited figures.
An estimated 9% of Scottish households — around 490,000 people — have no internet connection at all
Used on: News
Corrected from a previously-published "700,000 people" figure, which had no traceable primary source and was inconsistent with the household-survey-derived estimate above.
£157m Project Gigabit contract covers the Highlands, Outer Hebrides, and islands including Skye, Islay, and Tiree
Used on: News
Confirmed for the original contract; a later £18m top-up (Dumfries & Galloway/Scottish Borders) brought the wider total to ~£175m, worth checking if quoting the current total.
Shared Rural Network passed 150 masts UK-wide and 95% UK landmass 4G coverage, a year ahead of schedule; more than 50 masts are in Scotland, with up to 44 more publicly funded masts now building
Used on: News
Confirmed against the primary press release. This is mobile 4G coverage (Shared Rural Network), a separate scheme from fixed-line R100 — don't conflate the two when quoting coverage percentages.
Scotland's £200m digital inclusion pledge
The 2021 Programme for Government pledged £200 million to get up to 300,000 households online by the end of that Parliament (2026)
Used on: News · Write to your councillor
Confirmed against the exact primary-source wording. A smaller 2023 follow-on plan (£2.4m-£9.8m, targeting 4,000-16,000 people) also underdelivered — worth mentioning for completeness, though it doesn't change the core claim.
The only Scottish Government digital-exclusion funding in the 2025-26 budget is around £764,000, passed through from the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund as a Barnett consequential
Used on: News
Confirmed: £764,020 split between a CivTech challenge (£321,692) and the Connecting Scotland Digital Inclusion Fund (£442,327).
Connecting Scotland was funded at £50m at its pandemic peak in 2020
Used on: News · Why WIRES exists
Confirmed.
"No leadership, no momentum: Scottish Government has failed to act on digital exclusion" (Third Force News)
Used on: Who is acting? · Resources
Corrected the date — this was previously implied to be an August 2024 piece (the month of the Audit Scotland report it responds to); the article itself is dated September 2025.
The Scottish Government published a refreshed "Digital Strategy for Scotland: vision statement" (with COSLA) in November 2025, alongside the first in a promised series of delivery plans — but that plan covers sustainable digital public services, not digital exclusion, which still has no delivery plan or named accountable lead
Used on: Home · Who is acting? · Scottish policy
Corrected: an earlier version of this site said "no separate action plan has followed" the vision statement. In fact the Scottish Government's own policy page states it published "an overarching vision and the first of a series of delivery plans" in November 2025 — titled "Digital strategy for Scotland: sustainable digital public services - delivery plan 2025-2028." That plan addresses digital public services, not digital exclusion specifically. The vision statement's own Performance Framework is described as still being refreshed, and no plan or named lead for digital exclusion itself has been published as of this check.
In written answers on 18 September 2026, the Scottish Government said it is developing a Digital Inclusion Delivery Plan "to be published later this year", setting out clear actions and "how progress will be measured and reported" — the answers do not say who will be accountable for delivering it
Used on: Home · Who is acting?
Confirmed against the published answers (S7W-03032 to S7W-03035 all repeat the commitment).
Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector (GCVS) was awarded grant funding to host the Digital Inclusion Alliance
Used on: Why WIRES exists · Who is acting?
A host organisation is now confirmed, but GCVS's own announcement says only that "further details... will be shared in due course" — no published delivery plan, staffing, or launch date as of the announcement. Doesn't change the "no clear delivery plan" critique, just updates the governance picture.
Digital Poverty Alliance registered as a Scottish charity and was named a key partner of Scotland's Digital Inclusion Alliance
Used on: Why WIRES exists
Confirmed against DPA's own announcement.
Digital skills & who is excluded
15% of Scotland's adults (roughly 1 in 6) lack foundational digital skills
Used on: Beyond broadband · Who is acting?
This is one statistic, not two — earlier drafts of this site cited "15%" and "1 in 6" separately as if from different sources.
2.8 million people in the UK are entirely offline; 27% are "narrow" internet users
Used on: For organisations
Corrected from a previously-published "1.6 million offline / 23% struggle" — those numbers don't appear on Ofcom's page. Down from 13% of the population offline pre-pandemic to 5% now.
Around 10 million UK workers lack essential digital skills for work
Used on: For organisations
Previously mis-attributed to the same Ofcom page as the offline figures above — it's a separate Lloyds dataset.
8 million people lack the skills to make meaningful use of online services; 77% of the digitally excluded are over 65; 69% live with a disability or impairment
Used on: Digital health · Beyond broadband
Corrected the source link — it previously pointed to an NHS Alliance page that doesn't contain these figures.
Digitally excluded clients recorded by Scotland's Citizens Advice network rose 59% in two years — from 1,932 in 2021/22 to 3,065 in 2023/24
Used on: Who is acting?
Confirmed against the primary-source PDF, page 3.
Health & wellbeing evidence
"People with poor health and living with a disability, older people, migrants and those with a lower socioeconomic status are struggling the most in accessing these tools."
Used on: Digital health
Verified genuine — corrected one word ("these tools", not "digital health tools") to match the exact published wording.
WHO resolution WHA71.7 (2018) urges member states to make digital health equitable
Used on: Digital health
The resolution is broader than digital-health equity alone (it covers digital health strategy generally) — our framing is a fair summary, not a direct quote.
2025 study of 87,256 observations across China, the US and the UK links digital exclusion to loneliness in older adults
Used on: Digital health
Confirmed: 39,190 participants, 87,256 observations, all three countries, consistent association found.
Social isolation carries mortality risk comparable to smoking and obesity; ~1 in 4 community-dwelling Americans 65+ are socially isolated
Used on: Digital health
This is a general isolation/mortality finding, not specific to digital exclusion — WIRES draws that connection, NASEM does not make it directly.
US counties with higher digital exclusion had higher COVID-19 case rates, death rates, and lower vaccination take-up
Used on: Digital health
Confirmed: counties with >40% disconnection had ~3x the death rate of counties with 0–10% disconnection. US-only study; association, not proven causation.
AI and digital-first services
"Digitally excluded people would be poorly represented in AI training datasets, amplifying their marginalisation."
Used on: For organisations
Confirmed genuine, close paraphrase of the committee's findings.
"A growing class of people who cannot reliably access, use or benefit from digital services essential to modern life."
Used on: For organisations
Verified genuine and near-verbatim.
WCAG 2.2 AA is the current accessibility standard for UK public sector websites
Used on: For organisations
The 2018 regulations themselves just say "WCAG, as amended from time to time" — 2.2 AA is the version current GOV.UK guidance names.
Glasgow, Scottish councils & Audit Scotland
35% of households in Glasgow's social rented housing (circa 38,500) do not use home broadband; 32 RSLs, covering 75% of social housing stock, back the strategy
Used on: Scottish policy · Who is acting?
Corrected from "65% do not use" — the strategy actually states 65% of social rented households use broadband (p.7/p.4), meaning 35%, around 38,500 households, do not (p.20, the more precise figure). The two numbers were transposed in an earlier pass; re-verified directly against the source PDF.
Connecting Scotland supported more than 60,000 households during the pandemic
Used on: Why WIRES exists
Corrected from "61,000 people" — the official evaluation counts households, not individuals, and the actual number of people reached is higher.
Homelessness & housing emergency
A household becomes homeless in Scotland every 15 minutes; 39 children become homeless every day; households in temporary accommodation are at their highest level since the series began in 2002
Used on: Why it matters
These are live, twice-yearly updated figures — re-check against the current Scottish Government release before quoting in anything formal.
Community broadband networks
Highland Community Broadband (HCB), the volunteer-run CIC that connected Ullapool and Wester Ross from 2017, closed in April 2026 due to rising costs — but sold its network to Scotnet, who have continued operating and upgrading it (now branded Wester Ross Broadband)
Used on: Global spotlight · Who is acting? · Resources · News: HCB has closed · News: Ullapool operator closes
Corrected: an earlier version of this site described HCB's closure as a straightforward service loss for residents ("a significant loss", "closure shows what happens without structural policy support"). HCB's own Company Secretary got in touch (14 Sep 2026) to clarify the network was sold onward rather than shut down — confirmed via Scotnet's own site, which states it bought the HCB network in May 2026 and has been "upgrading and expanding the services and coverage." The volunteer-run model still proved financially unviable (that part was accurate), but residents were not left without service. The site pages were corrected on 14 Sep 2026; two earlier news articles on the closure ("Highland Community Broadband has closed — and that matters" and "Ullapool's community broadband network closes…") still described the network as shut down and were corrected on 15 Oct 2026, each with a correction note.
Historical & background statistics
In Jan–Feb 2020, 76% of GB adults used internet banking (up from 30% in 2007); 87% had shopped online in the prior 12 months; 80% of single-adult 65+ households had a connection
Used on: Why it matters
This ONS series was discontinued; ONS points readers to Ofcom's Technology Tracker instead. These are now historical, not current, figures — the site frames them that way.
Scottish Gaelic's digital text corpus is around 150 million words, versus 4 billion for Basque
Used on: Beyond broadband
CivTech states these figures but doesn't footnote its own source — treat as a secondary citation, not a primary dataset.
Get Help scheme details
The Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme closes to new applications on 20 November 2026
The same notice appears on mygov.scot. Requests submitted before the closing date will still be processed.
Aberdeenshire: 1,189 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme vouchers used, with 2,089 premises still eligible (October 2026)
Used on: News · Who is acting?
Figures supplied by a council officer, who agreed to their being cited; they are not in a published document we could link to. The council also says Aberdeenshire has the highest take-up of the scheme in Scotland, which we report as its claim. The link is to the council's digital connectivity page.
National Databank cards are available through over 4,000 Digital Inclusion Hubs
Used on: Get help
Corrected from a stale "1,600 community organisations" figure — the partner network has grown substantially since that snapshot.
Jobcentre Plus branches have free computers and Wi-Fi, with in-person digital support available
Used on: Get help
Removed a previously-published "Monday to Friday, 10am-3pm" digital-mentor schedule — that specific claim traced only to a single 2017 local council press release about three branches, not a current national standard. Support hours genuinely vary by branch.
TalkTalk has offered free superfast broadband for six months to DWP benefit claimants, referred by a work coach
Used on: Get help
Whether this specific scheme is still running as of mid-2026 is disputed between sources — some suggest it paused in 2025. Softened the copy to reflect that uncertainty rather than asserting it confidently.
Setting up and funding WIRES
Registering a charity with OSCR, including a SCIO, is free; a SCIO needs at least three charity trustees
Used on: Becoming an organisation
OSCR FAQ: "It is free to apply and to register a charity." The SCIO guide: "Once constituted, the SCIO is required to have at least three charity trustees."
OSCR charity applications can take more than 100 days
Used on: Becoming an organisation
OSCR's service page says "some applications taking over 100 days to process". SCVO says OSCR aims to process applications within 100 days. We could not find a current published OSCR service standard.
Gift Aid adds 25p to every £1 donated by a UK taxpayer, and only charities (and community amateur sports clubs) can claim it
Used on: Becoming an organisation
25p per £1 is the basic-rate (20%) tax reclaimed on the gross gift.
Registering a company at Companies House costs £100 online, and the annual confirmation statement £50
Used on: Becoming an organisation
Up from £50 and £34. Directors must also verify their identity with Companies House, compulsory since 18 November 2025.
National Lottery Awards for All Scotland gives £300 to £20,000, and can fund projects that are mainly about campaigning if they are not party political
Used on: Becoming an organisation
The Fund says: "We will not fund projects where political activities are the main purpose. But we can fund projects that are mainly about campaigning." Applicants need at least two unrelated people running the organisation and a bank account in its name.
Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust small grants of up to £10,000 can be applied for at any time
Used on: Becoming an organisation
JRRT is a non-charitable funder and says it prefers to fund organisations that are not charities. Its priorities are democracy-related; it does not fund individuals without a host organisation.
The Robertson Trust Wee Grants give up to £5,000 to constituted groups and charities with income under £30,000 that support people experiencing poverty
Used on: Becoming an organisation
Requires at least three committee members (two unconnected) and two unconnected people to approve every payment. It does not accept applications from limited companies or CICs that are not registered charities.
Non-party campaigners must register with the Electoral Commission before spending more than £10,000 on regulated campaign activity in a regulated period
Used on: Becoming an organisation
Applies to UK Parliament and Scottish Parliament elections. Scottish council elections (next on 6 May 2027) use local, candidate-specific rules instead, and the Electoral Commission says its guidance for 2027 is being updated. A separate Scottish duty to put an imprint on some online election material has applied to organisations since 17 November 2025.
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