Faster broadband cut 742,000 miles of travel every week in Britain
Key Points
- Voucher households travel 742,000 fewer miles every week
- Most of the saving came from fewer car journeys
- Home working drove the drop in commuting
- Net carbon saving of around 2,870 tonnes a year
- Rural scheme delivered nearly double the savings
Households with government-funded gigabit broadband now travel 742,000 fewer miles each week.
The figure comes from the final evaluation of Building Digital UK’s legacy voucher schemes, carried out by consultancies Hatch, GC Insight and Belmana.
The evaluation covered the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, which ran from November 2017 to May 2020, and the Rural Gigabit Connectivity scheme, which ran from May 2019 to March 2021.
Both schemes gave households and businesses vouchers worth between £1,500 and £3,500 per premises towards the cost of a gigabit connection.
The evaluators found that 47% of households on the first scheme and 43% on the rural scheme travelled less after their upgrade. Those households cut an average of 99 and 103 miles a week respectively.
Across the 16,421 households that received a voucher, this added up to 308,000 fewer miles a week for the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and 434,000 for the rural scheme.
Cars accounted for most of the saving, with households driving around 327,500 fewer miles in diesel cars and 225,000 fewer miles in petrol cars each week. Train and metro journeys fell by around 138,000 miles a week.
The evaluators said the reduction came mostly from more home working and less commuting.
Around 5,340 adults in voucher households worked from home for the first time or more often after the upgrade. Of those now working from home, 70% said the faster connection was very important in making it possible, and a further 21% said it was important.
Cutting the travel removed around 5,870 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. Extra heating and electricity use at home added back 2,354 tonnes, while emptier offices saved a further 1,361 tonnes.
That left gross savings of around 4,880 tonnes a year, or 3.51kg per home worker per working day.
After stripping out households that would have upgraded anyway, the evaluators put the net saving at around 2,870 tonnes a year.
The rural scheme delivered around 1,900 tonnes of that, nearly double the 970 tonnes from the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme.
Over three years, the evaluators estimated total savings of between 7,760 and 9,480 tonnes, worth around £2.29 million at the government’s official carbon value.
The evaluators said the benefits could last longer than three years, but the available data does not stretch beyond that point.
Office for National Statistics figures showed working patterns have barely shifted since the household survey in early 2022. In March 2025, 28% of adults worked a hybrid pattern and 15% worked fully from home.
The carbon savings formed a small part of the schemes’ overall value, which the evaluators put at £395 million to £546 million against costs of around £139 million. Most of that came from household wellbeing gains and higher wages for workers.
