The report makes fascinating reading, and luckily a lot of it reinforced what we already knew – which is always reassuring!

Amongst those who are offline, 51% are 65+, 71% are C2DE and 50% have no formal qualification, which pretty much echoes the type of learners who are using UK online centres.   

People’s motivations for getting online reflect what we hear – 31% of internet newcomers are drawn online by being able to communicate with family and friends, 21% because they could find information to help them with everyday life and 21% to help them research products and services.

And amongst all the different groups identified by the report, from the hi-tech influencers to the concerned resistors, all said the first thing they would do to learn more would be to ask someone else for help.

But one of the most interesting findings from the research is that 23% of non-users are classed as lapsed users, so they’d used the internet before but aren’t doing so now. On top of this, 4 in 10 non-users class themselves as proxy users, so they would ask someone else to use the internet on their behalf. Together these lapsed and proxy users make up a bigger proportion of the offline population than those who have never been online before, and so it seems only right that we focus more on these groups, and think more about how we can inspire and support them to do more online.

46% of people questioned by the report couldn’t live without the internet – that sounds like me! So for those that don’t use the internet, for whatever reason, it must really feel like the gap is widening, and the online world is further off than ever.

It’s great that the BBC has done this new research. Their report provides a really useful insight and we need to make sure future research builds on it; I hope the Social Digital Research Hub can help more people to hear about research that’s taken place.

Which, according to the latest Internet Access results from the ONS, released today, is 7.82 million people in the UK. This is down 10% on this time last year, which is a huge achievement.

And there’s more good news. Following our recent research symposiums, the ONS have, for the first time in a long while, started breaking results down according to those who haven’t used the internet in the last three months since questioning, revealing the numbers of people who – despite having been online – aren’t getting any benefit from computers and the internet at all.

There are an estimated 14.5 million people in the UK who have been online before, but don’t have adequate skills to use it, and we’re keen to know more about them, so it’s great that the ONS are recognising this third group, the ‘ex-users’.

Of all the adults asked about internet usage by the ONS, 97% had used it in the three months prior to being questioned. This might seem like a bit of a clean sweep, but when you break this figure down you see the real picture. Of those aged 75 or over, 83% hadn’t used the internet in the last three months. Add this to the huge numbers in this age bracket who have never used the internet, and it shows that only 24% of those over 75s are getting any real benefit from being online.

The BBC has also recently released some research that shows that, of the total population, 11% are past or proxy users. This research makes a really interesting read, and warrants a blog post in its own right, so keep an eye out for that one!

What these figures do show is that while inspiring people to go online for the first time is one of the challenges we face, it’s certainly not the only one. We need to understand better what keeps people coming back to computers and the internet, what encourages them to keep developing their skills, and how we can support ex-users so they too can take advantage of all the benefits being online can offer.

I’m a big advocate of working together, so it’s great that I can talk about a project that has done just this, resulting in positive outcomes for a whole city.

We kicked off the Sheffield Channel Shift project late last year. Sheffield’s our home city and we’re pretty passionate about it. Unsurprisingly, we’re also pretty passionate about the internet, and what it can do to make people’s lives easier, as well as to save the government money. So it seemed natural for us to bring these two together.

Thus, the Channel Shift project was born. The project aimed to bring lots of different partners, including Sheffield City Council, Jobcentre Plus, the Department for Work and Pensions and Citizens Advice Bureau together with some of our local UK online centres,  so we could work out just what we needed to do to encourage people to move transactions online across the city.

We completed the project in April, and one of the main discoveries was that it’s really all about culture change, and ensuring the staff at every level buy into the project, and can understand the online services that are available and why they should be promoting them. They also need to be able to direct customers to where they can go to find help and support. A joined-up, partnership-led approach is the only way to make this happen.

The project was a real success, in lots of ways. 75% of people we surveyed after the project said they could now access services online, with 23% estimating they had reduced calls or face-to-face interactions by 10 a month, representing a huge saving.

And not only did we have a real impact during the life of the project, but we also established partnerships that will continue way into the future. Our partners will continue promoting the benefits of the internet, and will help people find the support they need to use it. They’ll continue to save the government, and organisations, money, and they’ll continue to make people’s lives bigger by opening up new worlds.

This is why I think the Sheffield Channel Shift project has been such a success, and why I’m keen to see it replicated across the country.