BT jobs boost for Liverpool
• Growth of broadband services brings 240 new jobs to city;
• Mayor welcomes ‘vote of confidence’ in Liverpool
BT today announced a major recruitment drive in Liverpool.
The company confirmed it plans to recruit 240 staff to support the growth of
high-speed broadband services.
Most of the recruits will be employed as full-time customer service advisors. There
will also be some additional managerial roles. All of them will be based at BT’s Lancaster
House offices in Old Hall Street.
The first wave of recruitment begins today (Monday, December 2) with local
advertising. More information about the jobs will also be available from:
http://www.btplc.com/Careercentre/Ourlocations/UK/Customerserviceopportunities/index.htm
Mike Blackburn, BT’s regional director for the North West, said: “BT is already one of
Liverpool’s largest private sector employers and we are keen to further expand our presence
in the city. Liverpool is a great city to do business in. It has excellent communications with
the rest of the UK and further afield, and we have been impressed by the quality of the
people we have recruited in the past. BT has an exciting future and we want Liverpool to be
part of our growing success.
“We are particularly looking for outgoing people who are interested in a career in one
of the UK’s leading companies. They do not have to have had previous customer service
experience.”
Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, said: “This is fantastic news and a real vote of
confidence in Liverpool by BT.
“We are committed to doing all we can to bring additional jobs and investment to the
city, and this announcement means that a significant number of good quality positions will be
created for local people by a blue chip employer.
“I am absolutely delighted that they have chosen Liverpool and it builds on our
already strong partnership with the company.”
After undergoing thorough training, it is hoped the first advisors will be ready to start
supporting customers from March 2014. Recruitment will continue during the year and it is
expected to be completed by next autumn.
Additional information about BT in Liverpool
• BT employs around 1,500 people in the Liverpool City Region, and supports an additional 500 jobs in the City Region through suppliers.
• More than 2,000 BT employees live in the Liverpool City Region.
• The economic impact of BT’s activities in the Liverpool City Region is £294 million per annum.
• One in eight people in the information communications and technology sector in the Liverpool City Region area is directly employed by BT.
• Twelve telephone exchanges in the Liverpool city area have already been announced by Openreach to be upgraded for fibre deployment, eight of which are now live. This will allow homes and businesses to experience speeds up to 80Mb/s and download speeds of up to 20Mb/s.
• BT has seven ethernet nodes in Liverpool bringing improved communications services closer to businesses and reducing access costs.
• Liverpool Direct Limited – BT’s joint venture contract with Liverpool City Council was formed in 2001. More than 1,300 people currently work there.
In September BT launched a multi-million pound partnership with Merseyside Connected to extend fibre broadband to up to 98 per cent of Merseyside within the next three years. It builds on BT’s commercial rollout of faster fibre broadband. The combined programmes will mean the vast majority of Merseyside – around 634,000 homes and businesses – could have access to fibre broadband by the end of July 2016. Merseyside Connected is made up of Liverpool City Council – along with Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral Councils. BT is contributing £6 million towards the overall cost of deployment in “non-commercial” areas while European funding (ERDF) is contributing £4.4 million, with £5.46 million coming from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) fund.
