The problem
Building Regulations have required gigabit-ready infrastructure in new dwellings in England since December 2022, with a cost cap per dwelling and a connectivity plan required alongside the building notice. Scotland and Wales followed.
There is no published compliance dataset. A regulation with a per-dwelling duty, a cost cap and a plan requirement, and no monitoring data at all.
The raw material to check it is free and unusually good. The broadband subsidy programme publishes property-level data — every record carrying a property identifier, a status flag, and the contracted supplier where one exists. A status of "White" means no gigabit infrastructure and none expected within three years. It refreshes every four months.
The regulator computes coverage per premises, using a licensed address product, and then publishes it aggregated to postcode. In mixed postcodes — common in rural areas and on new estates — knowing 83% of a postcode has gigabit tells you nothing about a specific house.
So the property-level truth exists on the subsidy side, the property-level truth is computed and discarded on the coverage side, and the compliance question nobody is asking is entirely property-shaped.
The system
Lastmile joins property-level gigabit status to newly completed homes, and answers the question the regulation implies but nobody monitors: are new homes actually being built connectable, and are they being connected?
The subsidy dataset supplies one side of the join for free, already keyed on property identifiers. The other side — which properties are new homes — comes from new-build energy certificates, which carry the same identifier and a field distinguishing new build from existing stock.
That produces a national compliance picture at property level: new homes in areas with no gigabit infrastructure, new homes in subsidy intervention areas, and new developments where connectivity was planned but not delivered.
It also flags the inverse, which matters for public money: subsidised interventions targeting premises that new development has already made commercially viable.
Worked examples
Two situations this system answers
A family buys a new-build and discovers there is no gigabit connection and none planned. Building regulations have required every new home to be built connectable since 2022, and nobody checks.
Lastmile matches new homes to house-by-house broadband records, producing the compliance picture that has never existed for that rule.
Public subsidy is targeted at premises that new development has already made commercially viable, because the intervention list and the development pipeline are never compared.
Lastmile shows the overlap, so public money goes where companies genuinely will not build on their own.
Data foundation
Every dataset below is open, or its access constraint is stated
| Dataset | Publisher | What it provides |
|---|---|---|
| Open market review premises data | Building Digital UK | Property-level gigabit status with subsidy classification, contracted supplier and delivery date. Free, open licence, refreshed every four months. England and Wales. |
| Connected Nations | Ofcom | Coverage at postcode for fixed and 100-metre grid for mobile. Free and open — computed per premises, published aggregated. |
| Price paid transactions | HM Land Registry | Free, open, no account. Carries an old/new flag identifying newly built homes at address level — the new-build signal, without a sign-in. |
| Open property identifiers | Ordnance Survey | The free identifier file, 41.6 million records. Carries no status field, so cannot distinguish a plot from a house. |
| Linked identifiers | Ordnance Survey | The free crosswalk between property, street and topographic identifiers. |
| Planning applications | MHCLG and authority portals | Development pipeline, for forward-looking connectivity planning. |
Capabilities
Benefits
For government
- Creates the compliance evidence base for a building regulation that has run unmonitored since 2022.
- Improves subsidy targeting by identifying interventions overtaken by commercial development.
- Gives the broadband programme a development-aware view rather than a static premises view.
- Supports building control and planning authorities enforcing a duty they currently cannot check.
For the public
- Buyers of new homes can see connectivity status before purchase rather than after moving in.
- Households in genuine notspots become visible individually rather than averaged into a postcode.
- Public subsidy targeted where commercial build genuinely will not reach.
Delivery
Phasing
Risks & mitigations
A first sale indicates completion imperfectly, and self-build and rented stock may never transact. The lag and the coverage gap must be measured empirically before any claim about either.
Infrastructure passing a property is not the same as a working service in the home. The data supports the former; claims must not overreach into the latter.
The property-level subsidy data covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and must be assembled, not assumed.
Sources
All sources checked in August 2026. Figures carry the reference period of their source, which may differ from publication date. Where a figure could not be verified against a primary source it is not used.