28
March
2022
|
17:34
Europe/Amsterdam

Openreach appoints a new independent board member

Openreach today announces the appointment of Natalie Ceeney as a non-executive member to its Board, replacing Liz Benison who will be stepping down on 30th April 2022. Liz joined the Openreach Board in March 2017 and has since then completed over five years as an independent Board member.

Natalie Ceeney is an experienced non-executive, who also serves on the Board of Anglian Water Services LTD, Ford Credit Europe and LV=. Natalie started her career at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting partnership - and has since then spent her subsequent executive career as a CEO with HM Court and Tribunal Service, the Financial Ombudsman Service, and the National Archives – leading on transformation and change, with a strong focus on meeting customer needs. She will be joining the Board as an independent director on 1 May 2022.

Mike McTighe, Chair of Openreach, said: “Liz has played an important part in Openreach’s development into the company it is today, and she has been a passionate advocate on the Board for customer focus and operational robustness.  She’s stepping down to focus more on her full-time CEO role at ISS UK and Ireland. I’m sorry to see her go but I’d like to thank her for her invaluable contributions in the early years of the Openreach Board and wish her good luck in her new role.

“I’m delighted to welcome Natalie to the Board at this crucial time - as we continue to build our full fibre network across the nation. Natalie is a true consumer champion and her experience in strategy and transformation will serve the Board well as we look ahead to the next stage of our journey.”

The Openreach board is made up of seven members:

·       Mike McTighe, Openreach Chairman

·       Edward Astle

·       Andrew Barron

·       Liz Benison, to be replaced by Natalie Ceeney 1 May 2022

·       Clive Selley, Openreach Chief Executive

·       Matt Davies, Openreach Chief Finance Officer

·       Simon Lowth, BT Group Finance Director

Boilerplate

Openreach Limited is the UK’s digital network business.  

We’re more than 35,000 people, working in every community to connect homes, schools, shops, banks, hospitals, libraries, mobile phone masts, broadcasters, governments and businesses – large and small – to the world. 

Our mission is to build the best possible network, with the highest quality service, making sure that everyone in the UK can be connected. 

We work on behalf of more than 665 communications providers like BT, SKY, TalkTalk, Vodafone, and Zen, and our broadband network is the biggest in the UK, passing more than 31.8m premises. 

Over the last decade we’ve invested more than £15 billion into our network and, at more than 190 million kilometres – it’s now long enough to wrap around the world 4,798 times. 

Today we’re building an even faster, more reliable and future-proof broadband network which will be the UK’s digital platform for decades to come. We’re making progress towards our full fibre optic network target to reach 25 million premises by December 2026. Research shows a nationwide Full Fibre network could potentially provide a £59bn boost to UK productivity.

To help build the new fibre network and deliver better service across the country – we’ve created and filled more than 9,000 apprenticeship roles in the last two years and we’re recruiting another 1,000 trainee roles in Openreach in 2021. We’re also building greener – we operate the UK’s second largest commercial fleet and want to help lead the transition to electric vehicles, with a target to transition our fleet to being electric in 2030. 

Openreach is a highly regulated, wholly owned, and independently governed unit of the BT Group. More than 90 per cent of our revenues come from services that are regulated by Ofcom and any company can access our products under equivalent prices, terms and conditions. 

For the year ended 31 March 2021, we reported revenue of £5,244m.

For more information, visit www.openreach.co.uk