23rd July 2026
Learnings from our Cumbria Digital Inclusion Network.
This is an academic study co-authored by Richard Heeks from the University of Manchester Global Development Institute, and our Sarah Jewell, who is the local co-ordinator of Let's Get Digital in West Cumbria. Through in-depth interviews with Cumbria Digital Inclusion Network, the report pulls out...
- Six best practices: from using physical places and forging human connections to increasing digital inclusion "by stealth".
- Six key challenges: from access to AI.
- Seven recommendations: what needs doing at local authority level to make it happen.
- Four high level lessons: see below....
Cumbria context
Estimates suggest around 68,000 adults in Cumbria lack basic digital skills and over 125,000 people live in households with slow or very slow internet connections. While connectivity maps suggest a primarily rural problem, the Digital Exclusion Risk Index tells a different story: the sharpest concentrations of digital exclusion risk are found in urban, post-industrial communities.
We run a Let's Get Digital programme in West Cumbria, which provides free training and support for organisation that want to help others get vital digital skills. As a spin off from this, we also run the Cumbria Digital Inclusion Network, which brings together organisations from across the area who want to tackle digital exclusion.
High Level Lessons
The report highlights the fact that variations in the geography, history and institutional landscape of every area, mean that different places have different challenges. But these four lessons are likely to be useful to practitioners and policymakers across the UK.
- People: effective digital inclusion is a relational practice, not a technical service.
- Purpose: its goals should be life outcomes, not digital competencies.
- Partnerships: it requires ecosystem investment not project funding
- Place: it must be locally embedded not nationally prescribed.
These "4Ps" are crucial to tackle one of the most pressing but least visible forms of inequality in the UK.
People, purpose, partnership, place
Let's Get Digital and the DI Network
