Blackburn with Darwen Council is to give hundreds of its old laptops to digitally excluded households in the borough currently without internet access.

The authority expects to replace 1,468 devices that are more than five years old.

Now its digital and customer services boss Cllr Mahfooz Hussain has asked Thursday's meeting of the council's executive board to approve a strategy to donate the laptops for reuse in the local community.

To do so the authority will appoint The Making Rooms as its primary delivery partner to support redistribution to the six per cent of households without such devices.

The donated laptops will be wiped, licensed and where necessary repaired.

His report says: "My department has made significant progress on replacing legacy devices that are failing.

"It is anticipated that many devices will be recycled due to the number deemed viable for reuse and the demand for donated laptops for community use.

"The council is committed to ensuring that no one is left behind,

"A component of this stream of work is digital inclusion because we know that there are sections of our population who are not able to use the internet in ways that are needed to participate fully in modern society.

"To help us meet our aspirations around digital inclusion, we have explored the possibility of recycling used assets back into the community.

"We have engaged with local community groups including The Making Rooms to understand how the process of donating devices could be undertaken and the benefits this would realise

"The Making Rooms knows the importance of encouraging young people to engage with technology at an early age before harmful self-defeating narratives and technophobia set in.

"Partnering with The Making Rooms would enable the council to donate devices to a well-established local community scheme that serves to improve the skillsets of local young people, improve educational and employment prospects, and make the borough more digitally inclusive.

"They possess the required skills for the end-of-life devices to be maintained for reuse, as the end-of-life devices are anticipated to require consistent maintenance to continue to function.

"The Making Rooms have been awarded a £55,000 grant to tackle electronic waste and help communities in need get online which will be utilised to support the delivery of this initiative.

"This project has been named ‘Repair Space Blackburn’ and will use the donated devices to teach residents skills in repairing laptops.

"As such we will be providing Making Rooms with broken devices as well as old working devices (for them to upgrade), so that they can deliver the training needed."