Jobs boost for Wales with more than 200 new Openreach roles across the country
More than 200 jobs are being created across Wales, as part of a huge recruitment drive announced today (Monday 28 January 2019) by Openreach.
The majority of new roles will be for trainee engineers – located around the country including Cardiff, Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire, Powys and Swansea – and will join the country’s largest team of telecoms experts working to expand, upgrade, maintain and install services over Openreach’s national broadband network.
Sixty desk-based roles will also be created in Cardiff working on Openreach’s commitment to opening up its Duct and Pole infrastructure to other communication providers. The new recruits will join the 1800 strong Openreach workforce that are already based in Wales.
When combined with last year’s recruitment of around 250 trainee engineer roles Openreach will have created more than 450 – mostly trainee engineer roles – throughout Wales.
Across the UK, more than 3,000 trainee engineers are being recruited, mainly to deliver the company’s ‘Fibre First’ programme, which is bringing faster, more reliable and future proof Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology to millions of front doors.
Clive Selley, Chief Executive of Openreach said: “Openreach is ambitious for the UK and is determined to build full fibre as quickly as possible to ensure the country has a reliable broadband network capable of supporting future data-hungry services and applications essential for boosting productivity and sustaining our position as a leading digital economy.”
“We’re making great progress towards reaching our target of upgrading three million homes and businesses to full fibre by the end of 2020 – reaching another 13k premises per week – and these new recruits in Wales will play a crucial role in that programme. Openreach is a people business and our new apprentices will enable us to fulfil our commitments, with an ultimate ambition to deliver the best possible connectivity to everyone, everywhere, equally, across the entire country.”
Welsh Government Economy Minister, Ken Skates said:”News that Openreach is set to create over 200 new roles in locations across North, South, Mid and West Wales is hugely welcome. These are high quality jobs, with a mixture of trainee engineer roles and desk based jobs that will help to ensure people across Wales enjoy the first class connectivity that modern life demands. “
“Thanks to our Superfast Cymru programme, which is driven by a partnership between private and public sector, 95% of properties across Wales now have access to superfast broadband and we remain committed to increasing that figure.
“We will continue to work closely with Openreach on our successor project which will roll-out to a further 26,000 premises across Wales, with the majority of these premises enjoying access to ultrafast speeds. We look forward to these new recruits playing an important part in that work.”
Huw Jones, Openreach’s director for service delivery in Wales, said: “We want people from all walks of life to apply for roles at Openreach, to build a diverse workforce that reflects the hugely diverse communities we serve. Last year we successfully recruited more women than ever before – and this year we want to go even further.
“Becoming an engineer can be an incredibly rewarding career, and we’re constantly improving our training and recruitment programmes to make sure we attract and keep the best in the business. We’re investing heavily in upskilling our people, so they can now do more for customers in a single visit and we recently launched new career pathways to give our engineers a clear sense of the skills, accountabilities and experience they need to get where they want to be.”
Openreach has already announced plans to invest in a new £1.2m fibre engineering academy at Newport that, when ready, will be used to help train the new recruits and upskill engineers.
To find out more about the Trainee Engineer Scheme click here www.openreach.co.uk/careers
