POOR mobile phone coverage in large parts of the region will soon be a thing of the past, a Cabinet minister pledged.

Culture Secretary Sajid Javid vowed that 90 per cent of the country would boast coverage in two years’ time – dramatically reducing huge ‘partial notspots’ in North Yorkshire and County Durham.

And he said further improvements would push that to “better than 90 per cent”, giving Britain “some of the best coverage in the world”.

Mr Javid told The Northern Echo: “Mobiles are not a luxury, as they were 20 years ago, but are seen as necessity - so you can make voice calls wherever you are in the UK.”

The comments follow the striking of a £5bn deal requiring the big four mobile phone companies to each provide coverage to all but ten per cent of the landmass, by 2017.

In North Yorkshire, no less than 28.1 per cent of the land area is served by only one or two of the four networks – leaving customers of the others without a signal.

County Durham (22.5 per cent) and Redcar and Cleveland (21.8 per cent) are also near the top of the list of areas blighted by ‘partial not spots’.

And five other parts of the region have significant weaknesses; Darlington (8.2 per cent), Stockton-on-Tees (8 per cent), York (7.7 per cent), Hartlepool (7.3 per cent) and Gateshead (7 per cent).

Before Christmas, Mr Javid abandoned plans to introduce “national roaming” - allowing customers to swap between networks – after the Home Secretary protested they would aid terrorists.

But he insisted the new idea was an improvement, a legally binding agreement on EE, O2, Three and Vodafone to extend investment to remote areas.