Openreach to create around 40 new jobs in Northumberland as it opens new training centre

Trainees at the Openreach's Thornaby training centre.

Georgia Currah, 27, previous worked in a local restaurant but felt ready for a new challenge and put her name forward.

She said: “I kept hearing really good things about working for Openreach so did some research and decided to apply.

"I’m only in week three of training but already loving that every day is different.

Georgia Currah, from Alnwick, is one of the trainees.

"One day you can be in a customer’s house fitting broadband and the next at the top of a telegraph pole.

“I’m currently learning the ropes at the new training centre in Thornaby which is brilliant as I’m working on a live network exactly as I would be out in the field.

"There’s a lot to take it but the combination of hands on and classroom-based learning makes it easy to take everything in.”

The firm is planning to create around 140 more jobs across the region in 2022 – 40 of them in Northumberland – as it continues to build and connect customers to its ultrafast, full fibre broadband network.

Nadine Dorries, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, officially opened the Teesside training school.

She said: “We are on a mission to level up the UK with better broadband and are investing a record £5 billion so hard-to-reach areas are not left behind.

"I was thrilled to visit Openreach’s new training centre where I met some inspiring young apprentices who will be at the heart of delivering our infrastructure revolution.”

Around £1.2 million was invested to redesign and refurbish the training centre.

The centre now boasts 11 classrooms, 64 telegraph poles across four pole fields, virtual reality training, a fully live fibre and copper network and a state-of-the-art replica street, built from scratch to recreate the real network in the outside world.

It enables engineers to experience a typical working day - from laying cables to building joints and making repairs, working underground or overhead and installing new services inside customers’ homes.

Clive Selley, CEO, 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.”