Telecoms giant to create 255 North West jobs as part of full fibre roll-out
Openreach today announced plans to create at least 255 North West engineering jobs, to be filled during 2021.
The new roles, across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire and Cumbria, will enable the company to continue improving service levels across its existing networks, while building and connecting customers to its new, ultrafast, ultra-reliable ‘Full Fibre’ broadband network at a record pace.
Overall, more than 5,300 new UK-based engineering jobs are being created, including more than 2,500 full-time jobs in Openreach’s own service and network build divisions, as well as an estimated 2,800 positions in its UK supply chain, through partners such as Kelly Group, Kier, MJ Quinn and Telent.
The UK’s largest digital infrastructure firm has separately made a commitment to upgrade all 27,000 Openreach vehicles – the second largest commercial fleet in the UK – to electric by 2030.
The announcement comes as the firm hit a record build rate for its Full Fibre broadband programme – which aims to reach 20 million homes and businesses by the mid-to-late 2020s – on the assumption it obtains the required critical enablers.
Openreach engineers are now delivering faster, more reliable connectivity to another 40,000 homes and businesses every week, or the equivalent of a home every 15 seconds.
Full fibre build is already under way in dozens of locations across the North West, including the urban areas of Manchester, Liverpool, Bury and Ormskirk, as well as harder to reach locations including Penrith, Millom, Great Eccleston, Burscough, Congleton and Frodsham.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) have found that a nationwide Full Fibre broadband network would boost UK productivity by £59bn by 2025 – and updated modelling suggests it could enable nearly one million more people to access employment, including more than 300,000 carers, nearly 250,000 older workers and 400,000 parents.
The pandemic has accelerated changes in working patterns and, with full fibre, nearly two million more people than previously estimated could also choose to work from home in the long term, reducing transport and housing pressures in big cities and boosting local and rural economies across the country.
Openreach regional director for the North, Robert Thorburn, said: “As a major employer and infrastructure builder, we believe Openreach can play a leading role in helping the UK to build back better and greener.
“Our Full Fibre network build is going faster than ever and we’re now looking for people across the North West to build a career with Openreach and help us upgrade broadband connections and continue improving service levels throughout the region.
“We’re also investing in our supply chain, which will support the creation of thousands of jobs based all over the UK.”
He added: “We know the network we’re building can deliver a host of green benefits – from consuming less power to enabling more home working and fewer commuting trips – and we’re going to take that a step further by committing to build and maintain that network using state-of-the-art electric vehicles across our 27,000-strong fleet. We’ll have completely transitioned to EVs by 2030.”
Openreach already employs more than 34,500 people, including in excess of 25,000 engineers who build, maintain and connect customers to its nationwide broadband network. Of these, more than 3,700 are based in the North West.
Over the past two years, Openreach has created more than 6,500 trainee engineering roles to support its build programme and to deliver improved customers service.
The new trainee apprenticeship roles will be filled during 2021 and come with a starting salary of £21,845 and recruits can be earning up to £28,353 following 12 months of specialist training to achieve an NVQ level 2, in one of Openreach’s world class training centres.
