Glasgow's bid to become one of the 10 UK cities to benefit from a £100 million fund to promote urban superfast broadband has been rejected by the Westminster Government in a humiliating pre-local election blow to plans to transform the quality of life in Scotland's largest city.

In a brief and sometimes scathing 650-word response to the city's glossy 30-page bid document, Digital Glasgow – Connected City, the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) criticised the city's proposals for being "unambitious", "lacking clarity" on plans to upgrade digital skills and "lacking detail" on value for money.

The bid was also faulted for the absence of a delivery timetable and lacking a plan to boost broadband take-up rates.

According to the response: "The panel felt the scale of the challenge facing Glasgow, with one of the lowest rates of broadband take-up of any city in the UK, was recognised in the proposal but the measures proposed fell short of meeting that challenge."

A spokesman for the city council rejected the "harsh" findings, and offered detailed rebuttal of individual points raised by the DCMS, claiming the department had provided "no convincing reason for Glasgow's bid being knocked back".

Glasgow's bid for extra superfast broadband cash, signed off by chief executive George Black in February this year, follows the launch of the DCMS's Super-Connected Cities Initiative following Chancellor George Osbornes's autumn statement last November. The initiative created the £100m Urban Broadband Fund (UBF), intended to launch 10 "super-connected cities" across the UK with 80-100Mbps broadband connectivity.

In addition to the national capitals Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London, bids were invited from other cities to compete to be among the six further cities designated to receive support to achieve the superfast broadband speeds over the next three years. So far, bids by Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds-Bradford, Manchester and Newcastle have been successful. No other Scottish cities were large enough to be eligible.

According to the bid criteria, "cities that demonstrate the best plans for digital-led growth, commitment of resources, streamlined planning procedures and state aid compliance will be chosen".

In its response to Glasgow's bid, the DCMS panel assessing the bids found fault with Glasgow's submission under six separate headings – business case, economic growth, resources, state aid, funding and demand stimulation. The response says: "The panel felt Glasgow's proposal fell short of a full, ambitious plan for a contiguous ultrafast and wireless-connected city. The main reasoning behind this is that with only 90% coverage of the city planned for the fixed element, 10% of the city would be excluded from the plans. This would leave patches of non-ultrafast broadband, which would fail to meet the vision of a large, contiguous area."

In response, Glasgow claimed the bid guidance notes "do not refer at any point to a requirement for 100% coverage" but rather that cities should "aim to maximise availability".

On "resources", the DCMS said: "Glasgow should have engaged with the development of planning processes with external bodies and private-sector stakeholders. This was vital because a large amount of risk in this area lies on other bodies outside the control of the council. Glasgow should have also provided more detail on network deployment and upgrading, indicating who would be responsible for the maintenance of the network after the initial build."

Some of the harshest criticisms were reserved for funding plans, where the DCMS wrote: "Glasgow did not provide clear evidence of private-sector match funding and had not included a clear derivation of costs. The proposal also did not show any evidence of links to Scottish Executive funding. Glasgow should have provided significantly more detail on risk-sharing, ownership and a general identification of risks."

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "Despite this set-back we will continue to work with the private sector to ensure the best possible coverage of broadband for the city."

Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Alex Neil MSP, said: "This is exactly the kind of project that should be going forward to promote economic growth and will be a major blow to businesses and people going about their daily lives, who would stand to benefit from funding for faster internet access. I would seriously question the UK Government's decision to exclude Glasgow and agree with Glasgow City Council that the UK Government's criticisms of Glasgow's bid do not stand up to scrutiny."

A DCMS spokesman said in response: "The Government undertook a detailed assessment of each bid against each of the criteria set in the bidding guidance. The cities chosen were those which best met the criteria set by the competition."