Openreach to recruit 540 North West staff in coming year

Telecoms giant Openreach said it will create and fill around 540 jobs in the North West this year, including more than 400 apprenticeships.

The recruitment drive is linked to the roll-out and delivery of its multibillion-pound UK broadband network which is on track to reach 25 million UK homes and businesses by December 2026.

In total, Openreach will create 4,000 jobs nationwide in the biggest recruitment exercise in its history.

And it said it is committed to creating a more diverse workforce. Last year it attracted 600 women into trainee engineering roles – more than double the previous year.

Kerry Biggar, 54, from Audenshaw in Manchester said: “Before joining Openreach last year I worked in hospitality in Manchester city centre. However, when COVID hit the industry collapsed and I was furloughed and eventually made redundant. I knew people who worked in Openreach and they kept telling me to go for it.

“It’s great at my age to start work in a completely new industry and know there are still opportunities ahead. I joined as a cabler but am already working on a managed service project and learning completely new skills.”

Clive Selley, Openreach CEO, said: “Openreach is a people business first and foremost, so I’m proud that we’re continuing to invest heavily in our people, having hired and trained more than 8,000 new engineers over the last two years.

“We’ve been building state of the art training schools all over the country where we can teach people the skills and techniques they need for long, exciting and rewarding careers in engineering.

“We want to reflect the communities we serve and give opportunities to people from all backgrounds, so I’m encouraged that we’ve recruited more women and minority groups this year compared to last year, but we’ve got much more to do in an industry that hasn’t been very diverse historically.”

Openreach also plans to retrain more than 3,000 of its existing engineers during the next year, changing their focus from fixing older, copper-based technologies to installing and maintaining faster, more reliable fibre connections.

More than 3,950 Openreach people already live and work in the North West. Openreach’s full fibre broadband rollout has already reached more than 830,000 local homes and businesses. Just last month, a further 196,000 were added to the build programme.