The expansion includes more than 2,500 full-time jobs in its service and network build divisions, as well as an estimated 2,800 positions in its UK supply chain, through partners including Telent, Instalcom, John Henry Group, Kelly Group, Kier, KN, MJ Quinn, Morrison Telecom Services, and NMCN.
Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said, "I welcome this tremendous investment by Openreach. It will help us build back better from the pandemic and create thousands of new, high skilled jobs delivering faster broadband to people across the UK. The plans are a huge step forward in our national mission to level up Britain's digital infrastructure and, alongside the government's £5 billion investment, will make sure even the hardest-to-reach areas get a lightning fast gigabit broadband connection."
Clive Selley, CEO, Openreach CEO added, “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 thousands more people to build a career with Openreach and help us upgrade broadband connections and continue improving service levels. We’re also investing in our supply chain, which will support the creation of thousands of jobs based all over the UK.
“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 more than 25,000 engineers who build, maintain and connect customers to its nationwide broadband network. Over the last two years, the company has created more than 6,500 trainee engineering roles to support its build programme and to deliver improved customer service.
New trainee apprenticeship roles to be filled during 2021 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 training centres.