Which regions use the Internet the least? New study finds out

The UK’s least Internet-connected regions

• Tees Valley and Durham are the least Internet-connected regions
• Lincolnshire and Merseyside come in second and third respectively
• Southern Scotland and Cornwall also make the list

Tees Valley and Durham are the least Internet-connected regions, new research has revealed.

The research carried out by Convertr.org analysed regional ONS data to determine which UK regions use the Internet the least.

It found that Tees Valley and Durham were the least connected regions, with only 87% of residents using the Internet in the last three months, nearly 10% lower than areas like Surrey, South London, and Berkshire. In early 2021, it was announced that 40,000 homes in the Tees Valley would receive upgrade speeds – up to a gigabit connection for some – through the government’s £5bn ‘Project Gigabit’ scheme.

Lincolnshire comes in second, with only 87.6% of residents using the Internet in the last three months. Lincolnshire’s statistics sits at nearly 3 percentage points lower than other East Midlands regions like Derbyshire and Leicestershire, and almost 5 percentage points lower than the UK average of 92%.

Merseyside is in a very close third place, with 87.7% of residents using the Internet in the last three months. Liverpool was the area in the region which was the least connected, with only 84% of Liverpool residents regularly using the Internet. An Ofcom study in 2020 found that one in 15 Merseyside homes don’t have access to fast and affordable broadband.

Southern Scotland falls just outside of the bottom three, with 88.7% of residents using the Internet in the past three months. Southern Scotland is one of two Scottish regions featuring in the bottom 10, with the Highlands coming in seventh place. Dumfries and Galloway saw numbers as low as 79.1%, with more than 20% of residents having not used the Internet in the past three months.

Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly sit in 10^th place, with 90% of residents using the Internet in the past three months. In March 2021, it was revealed that certain parts of Cornwall, which included the areas of Penzance, Looe and Callington, would benefit from the government’s ‘Project Gigabit’ scheme, receiving some of the fastest broadband speeds in the world.

Commenting on the findings, a spokesperson from Convertr.org said: “With the majority of all regions browsing the web daily, certain people still go months without using it, and it’s clear there is a stark contrast in the quality of broadband in the UK. The government spending billions on superfast speeds shows that there is an incentive to connect the UK through the Internet, and it will be interesting to see how these statistics change throughout the 2020s.”

Convertr.org offers free online file conversion for audio, video and image files, with many formats supported.