Openreach to create 250 new jobs in Yorkshire and the Humber

The new recruits will be based across every county in the region working to build and connect customers to the company’s ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband network.

The mammoth build is on track to reach 25 million UK homes and businesses by December 2026, including hundreds of thousands in Yorkshire and the Humber.

The hiring spree - 4,000 new jobs are being created across the UK - is part of the largest recruitment drive in Openreach’s history and will also help deliver further improvements in customer satisfaction.

Openreach already employs the UK’s largest team of telecoms engineers and professionals, and has committed to building a more diverse and inclusive team.

Last year, the company attracted 600 women into trainee engineering roles – more than double the previous year. The boost was thanks partly to employing language experts to transform its job adverts and descriptions, making them gender neutral.

Brooklyn Yates-Clarkson, 27, from Dewsbury, works as a cabler in Openreach’s chief engineers following a career as a signaller in the Royal Artillery.

She said: “Openreach has always been somewhere I've wanted to work but I never had to courage to apply until very recently.

"The thing I love most about the job is working outdoors and having to use both my physical and mental strength to get results. I enjoy jobs that are demanding and love that feeling of having had a hard day at work.

“Training was brilliant but even now a year on I'm constantly learning and developing so I’d say to anyone worried about starting out in a completely new industry to not worry about it at all.

"You can do this job regardless of background and there’s endless support available from trainers, mentors and teammates.”

Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, 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’re rightly recognised as one of the best big companies to work for in the UK, and we’re determined to stay that way, so 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.

“These new recruits will play a crucial role as we continue to improve services for our customers and build the biggest and best broadband network in the UK, covering millions of rural and urban homes.”

The new roles offer a competitive starting salary and long-term career prospects. Candidates don’t need any formal qualifications to apply. All they need is a driving licence, a strong work ethic, great customer service skills and an enthusiasm to work outdoors.

Openreach will provide all the equipment and training needed to do the rest.

Alongside its recruitment drive, Openreach has committed to represent ONS measured levels of ethnic diversity across the UK and is aiming for at least 20 per cent of its trainee engineer recruits to be women this year, with 50 per cent of its external hires into management also to be women by 2025.

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.

Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dorries, recently opened the company’s newest training centre in Thornaby, which is the latest of 11 regional training schools – including one in Bradford - it has built and upgraded across the country.

Around 25,000 engineers pass through these centres every year across the UK, receiving a combined 180,000 days in training.

More than 2,800 of the Openreach team already live and work in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Openreach’s full fibre broadband rollout has already reached more than 486,000 local homes and businesses. Last month, a further 90,000 were added to the build programme.