THE world may be increasingly dependent on the internet but more than 40,000 people in Dorset have not been online in the last three months, and probably never have.

Over the last 20 years the web has become more and more a part of everyday lives with many people checking social media or a news website when they wake up in the morning.

Shopping, work or simply filling out application forms for council tax, or benefits, are increasingly online activities.

However data from the Office for National Statistics shows that more than one in nine residents aged 16 or over have not used the internet in the last three months.

That’s 41,000 adults and it is likely those people have never gone online, according to the ONS report.

The average rate of non-use for the UK was 10 per cent with the ONS collecting the data over the first three months of this year.

In total, 308,000 people in Dorset used the internet in the last three months (88.2 per cent), an increase of seven and a half per cent than in 2012 when the ONS first began collecting this data.

The area covering Camden and the City of London has the highest internet usage with 97 per cent of residents having been online in the last three months.

Meanwhile in Mid and East Antrim, in Northern Ireland, has the lowest usage, with just 74 per cent of people accessing the internet in the three-month period.

Nationally, the number of adults who have never used the internet is shrinking with the only 8.4 per cent using the internet this year, down from 9.2 per cent in 2017.

Across the country virtually all people aged 16 to 34 are recent internet users, 99 per cent however only 44 per cent of adults aged 75 and over used the internet in the last three months.

Bournemouth currently has a district average out at 61.2 megabits per second (Mbps), almost six times more the 10Mbps that the government considers an acceptable minimum level of service but below the average for the county at

26.9mps.

At the end of 2017 Ofcom, the communications regulator, found more than one million homes in the UK did not have access to fast broadband at the minimum speed to stream music and TV services.

However, the government has pledged that by 2020 every house and business in the country will have 10Mbps-plus broadband speeds.