BT Group will be recruiting over 150 new local jobs as well as beginning a major refurbishment of its second contact centre in Newcastle.
The full-time contact centre roles will be recruited by EE, part of BT Group, over the next six months.
Nick Lane, MD for consumer customer services at BT, says: “BT is fully committed to Tyneside and we are really pleased to be creating new and permanent local EE jobs as well as investing in a second multi-million pound office refurbishment in the area.”
Jamie Driscoll, North of Tyne Mayor, adds: “Good news in the run up to Christmas for our region. Today’s announcement by BT of over 150 new full time jobs is hugely significant for North Tyneside and local people.”
The current North Tyneside building will undergo a revamp and once complete it will become “the largest consumer contact centre in the BT Group estate” for around 1,500 EE staff. There are no financial details beyond the “multi-million pound” comment.
The refurbishment of the building is due to start in January 2022 and will complete by Autumn 2022.
Today’s announcement (13 December) follows the recent “multi-million pound” refurbishment of the company’s Gosforth contact centre.
According to BT, in the economy of the North East it is responsible for generating £1 in every £60 produced in the region. It also generated £1.09 billion to the economy of the North East in gross value added, during the 2019/20 financial year.
Last month, BT opened its new global headquarters in Aldgate, London, as part of the firm’s “ongoing root and branch transformation programme”, which includes its offices across the UK.
The building, known as One Braham, houses around 3,500 staff. It’s all part of BT’s Better Workplace Programme, which will complete in 2024 and will see BT “rationalise” hundreds of its offices across the UK.
The first hub opened in September at Three Snowhill, Birmingham. Work is already underway on major new offices in cities including Bristol and Manchester.
In other news, and reported in September, BT said it intends to accelerate the UK’s slowly rising tide of 5G services.
To accomplish this, the firm announced the adoption of US-based Oracle’s Communications Cloud Native Converged Policy Management, a “unified policy framework for 5G and 4G”.
