Hundreds of jobs created as Peterborough telecommunications giant defies the gloom

Trainee engineers at the Openreach training centre in Peterborough.

The new roles will allow Openreach, which has its engineering training school based in Saville Road, Peterborough, to continue improvements to its existing networks while also building and connecting customers to its ultrafast ‘Full Fibre’ broadband network.

It plans to create 295 jobs across the East of England with 30 in Cambridgeshire plus 34 roles in Bedfordshire, 121 in Essex, 57 in Hertfordshire, 21 in Norfolk and 32 in Suffolk.

Across the UK, the company plans to create more than 5,300 engineering jobs, 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.

In addition, the digital infrastructure firm has just made a commitment to upgrade all 27,000 of its vehicles - the second largest commercial fleet in the UK - to electric by 2030.

Openreach regional director, Laura Whelan, 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 East of England 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.

“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.”

Over the last two years, Openreach has created more than 6,500 trainee engineering.

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.

Thousands of engineers to be recruited as new training school is opened in Peterborough