In 2021, the Scottish Government pledged £200m to get 300,000 households online by 2026. That deadline has now passed. The money was never spent. There is still no strategy, no plan, and no named person responsible.
Five years ago, the Scottish Government made a specific, costed commitment. The 2021 Programme for Government pledged £200 million to get 300,000 households online by 2026. That deadline has now passed. The money was never spent. The target was never met.
There was no announcement. No revised plan. No explanation of what happened to the ambition or the funding. The commitment simply disappeared from government communications while the number of digitally excluded households in Scotland remained largely unchanged.
In the 2025–26 Scottish budget, there is no dedicated line for tackling digital exclusion. The only digital inclusion funding currently deployed by the Scottish Government — around £764,000 — comes from the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund, passed through as a Barnett consequential. That compares to £50 million invested at the pandemic peak in 2020, when the urgency of digital exclusion briefly made it a political priority.
The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has tracked this decline closely. In a piece titled "The long wait for action", SCVO sets out how commitments have repeatedly been made and not followed through — a pattern of convening, consulting, and publishing without delivering.
"No leadership, no momentum."
Third Force News, 2025
The people who were meant to benefit from that £200m commitment are still waiting. Around one in six Scottish adults lacks the foundational digital skills needed for everyday life. 9% of Scottish households have no internet connection at all. These are not abstract statistics — they represent people unable to access Universal Credit online, book a GP appointment through an app, or apply for jobs through portals that assume you have an account and know how to use one.
The Audit Scotland report of August 2024 — which found no action plan and no named accountable lead for digital inclusion — described a situation that has since got worse, not better. The Public Audit Committee closed its scrutiny in January 2025 without the Scottish Government producing the plan that was requested.
The Scottish Government needs to say, plainly, what happened to the £200m commitment and what replaces it. Not a consultation. Not a new body. A funded plan, a named minister responsible for delivery, and a published timetable — the same things that have been asked for repeatedly since 2021.
WIRES is writing to COSLA and to the Scottish Government to ask directly: where is the plan, who is responsible, and when will it be published? You can write to your own councillor asking the same questions.
The Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme, worth up to £5,000 towards a faster connection, closes to new applications on 20 November 2026. In Aberdeenshire alone, 2,089 premises are still eligible and have not used it.
WIRES has sent its submission to the Competition and Markets Authority's inquiry into BT's purchase of TalkTalk, asking that any approval protects prices, guarantees access to a social tariff and recognises the greater effect in rural Scotland. The full text is here. Comments closed on 9 October; the CMA reports by 19 October.
We read the published digital strategies of Scotland's 32 councils. Of the 24 we could verify, only Glasgow has a standalone strategy on digital exclusion. In 22, it is a theme inside a plan about the council's own services. Eight we couldn't confirm.
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