Freeview Switch Off: Delay is Not Kindness. It’s How we Fail People Twice

Natalie Ceeney CBE

Chair, The Connection Project

As ministers consider whether traditional television broadcasting should continue until 2034 or 2044 with the Freeview switch off, Natalie Ceeney CBE argues that postponing the transition risks leaving vulnerable households with a declining service while denying them the wider benefits of digital inclusion.

Somewhere in Britain this week, someone is not thinking about their television. It works. The picture is fine. There is an aerial on the roof that has not needed attention in a decade.

What that viewer almost certainly does not know is that Whitehall is deciding when that signal should be switched off for good and replaced by television delivered through an internet connection: 2034 or 2044. With the consultation on the future of digital terrestrial television closing next week, that seemingly technical choice will shape how millions of people cope with the next decade of change.

The hidden cost of delaying change

The case for the later date sounds like the kinder one. Give people longer. Do not force change upon those who are older, poorer or less confident with technology. Let things move at their own pace.

I understand the instinct. I have spent much of my career leading institutions built to protect people who feel most exposed to change. But delay, however well meant, is rarely kind in practice. It is usually what causes the most damage.

Here is what actually happens if we wait. Digital terrestrial television will not simply hold steady for another decade while everything else moves on. The service will deteriorate. Fewer channels will be able to justify serving a shrinking audience, and investment will go elsewhere.

The households left relying on it, disproportionately older, poorer and more likely to include disabled people, will spend a decade watching a declining service before being required to switch anyway.

Many are already paying a hidden tax for being offline: up to 25 per cent more for essential goods and services, amounting to around £500 a year on average, because they cannot shop around online. Delay does not spare anyone the transition. It guarantees that they experience the worst version of it, on top of a cost they are already paying.

I recognise this pattern. Britain has lived through it before, at far greater cost. Across the late twentieth century, governments allowed industrial change to happen through drift rather than through a plan. They were reluctant to force painful choices upon communities and happier to let market forces set the pace.

Nobody intended to hollow out the towns that bore the cost. It happened one deferred decision at a time. We are still repairing the damage 40 years later.

We are approaching a version of the same choice again. This time, it is unfolding simultaneously across broadcasting, banking, telecommunications and public services, with artificial intelligence accelerating every one of those transitions.

Television is simply the clearest and smallest example of a decision the country will face repeatedly over the next 10 years.

Managing the transition on purpose

What is different now is that we have no excuse for not knowing better. We know what separates countries managing digital transitions successfully from those that are not: reliable connectivity; services designed to be simple; transitions that are planned and dated rather than left to drift; clear accountability; and support built in from the outset, rather than bolted on after things go wrong.

None of this is theoretical. Last week, The Connection Project brought together organisations spanning banking, broadcasting, telecommunications and the third sector to set out how Britain can do exactly that.

Our new Connected report argues that these transitions can no longer be managed separately. The infrastructure, investment and support that people need increasingly depend upon one another. Other countries have already shown that this approach works.

That is why the decision now facing the Government matters far beyond television. Choosing 2034 rather than 2044, and designing the transition around the people most likely to struggle with it, would do more than settle a broadcasting question.

It would connect people to jobs, healthcare and social care, while putting money back into the pockets of households that can least afford to lose it. Above all, it would show that Britain can manage a technological transition on purpose, rather than merely survive one. This would provide a model the country will need again very soon.

The kindest thing we can do for the people about whom we worry most is not simply to give them more time. It is to ensure that they never have to live through the worst version of the change at all.