Government Visa Review to Tackle Shortage of UK Fibre Engineers UPDATE
The British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, appears set to confirm earlier reports that she will make it easier for UK network operators and ISPs to tackle the ongoing shortage of skilled fibre broadband engineers by allowing the telecoms sector (as well as other industries) to hire more staff from abroad.
At present, there are over a hundred network operators deploying Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband networks across the country, but finding UK fibre engineers with the necessary skills remains a challenge. Indeed, this is one reason why so many operators have established their own in-house training schools, but doing that takes a lot of time and money.
Prior to Brexit, network operators would have looked to other EU countries to fill the shortfalls (Spain and Portugal have plenty of fibre engineers as their respective builds near completion), but until recently the Home Office had made securing surplus engineers from Europe difficult (example).
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However, the government has recently been engaging major operators on this subject, with previous reports suggesting that Truss – who has pledged to build “faster” (here) – would aim to solve the problem by developing a fast-track scheme for foreign engineers. The move would be complemented by changes under their new Growth Plan 2022, which will also make it easier for operators to access telecoms poles on private land for upgrades etc.
According to the FT (paywall), Truss will deliver this by launching a review of Britain’s visa system, which will make changes to the “shortage occupation list” (here). The list identifies roles deemed by the UK Government to be in short supply within the resident labour market, with such roles benefitting from more relaxed eligibility criteria for sponsored work visa applications (less paper work, delays and lower visa fees etc.). Broadband engineers are not currently listed.
The review, it’s claimed, could also loosen the requirement to speak English in some sectors to enable more foreign workers into the country (telecoms operators will still need English speakers). However, the change is likely to be balanced against a decrease in the number of overseas workers in other sectors (i.e. keeping net immigration level), although getting this right can be tricky and such changes don’t always encourage enough of an influx of workers to tackle the problem areas.
On the political front, the Prime Minister may, possibly, be risking a clash with cabinet members who hold an anti-immigration sentiment, which would be on top of those who have also been criticising her for the recent mini-budget. The latter appears to have contributed to another plummet in the value of the pound, although Putin’s veiled threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine probably hasn’t helped.
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A government spokesperson said previously:
“We’re funding the biggest broadband rollout in British history and we are supporting broadband companies to source the essential skilled workers they urgently need. We will not be providing a running commentary on the number of workers required or visas issued.”
Lest we forget that any changes to help attract more fibre engineers would both indirectly and directly benefit the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme, which has just started to award its first deployment contracts (here and here) under the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme.
UPDATE 9:51am
We’ve had a comment from Hyperoptic.
James Fredrickson, Policy Director at Hyperoptic, said:
“It’s great to see progress being made on this issue – this will be a big help in securing the skilled labour needed to accelerate full fibre rollout. We will continue to work with the Home Office to maximise the impact of this.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Looks like Liz is opening the barn door again to all industries not just telecoms.
And why not? We still can’t get enough people to staff our restaurants or drive our lorries, never mind fix our plumbing or install our fibre.
@NE555
Pay UK people a decent wage rather than leave them on benefits and get cheaper labour from abroad.
All these people need homes while they’re here and you do realize they have to concrete over our ‘green and pleasant land’ to achieve that.
No Dan, those living on benefits in council homes which technically belongs to all tax payers are not interested in improving their skills by getting training or better job because this will simply get them out of the benefit scheme. This is not my fantasy, this is what they keep saying and this is not the UK only issue.
I personally know people that would like to be fibre installers but they can’t drive, no driving licence and so they’ll just be sweeping the streets or clean toilets (unskilled work)… and the lazy benefit claiming scum will remain there until they die of obesity… so much for training every British person to be NASA professors!
There aren’t enough people of working age in the U.K. to staff the economy.
That’s been caused in part by government policies discouraging people from having children, but far more significantly by the demographic hump of the baby boomer generation who are now reaching an age where they begin to have significant Heath and care requirements.
Unemployment is almost at record lows, employment the opposite.
Without easy access to temporary immigration – as we had when EU members – the economy will falter.
“We’re funding” lol
I’m not convinced you could make a decent enough offer that would get skilled fibre engineers to leave Portugal and Spain to work in the UK, and come out ahead of where you’d be if you invested more in training. Openreach are one notable exception but I read a lot of stories where businesses are talking about not being able to get staff with the skills required to do a job and when you ask what their apprenticeship programme looks like you get blank stares in return.
As someone who fled Portugal to come to the UK, the difference in taxes alone is enough reason to come over.
Portugal has the 2nd highest taxation rates in Europe, second only to Lithuania. For a modest salary of £2500, in the UK you get more than £2050 but in Portugal the amount of money stolen is so much that it goes way down to just £1550. Decades of Socialist rule has really put the country in the toilet. People just live watching football and going to the beach but not thrive, there’s no hope
Spain has less thieving taxation but the amount of unemployment is even higher
I thought this was the whole reason we left Europe to stop the government from doing this. How about instead, train people living in the UK to do it. This is not like picking fruit for 20p an hour. This would be many peoples dream job. This angers me so immensely
20p an hour for picking fruit??? 🙂
The good ones can get nearer to £20 an hour.
As the article says, training is already happening, but not everybody wants to be a fibre engineer, and it takes quite a few months to train up a basic recruit (longer for higher skills) – none of which is cheap in a market where engineers were needed yesterday. The longer it takes, the slower and more costly the rollout.
Encourage people living on benefits in council houses to get any training, then job and lose benefits. Average salary on this position is £33k for a job in pretty much any weather conditions. I had £30k 8 years ago working as IT guy.
I think it’s important to reflect that when we say “fibre engineer”, we’re covering a multitude of different roles, some of which will require a fairly long list of prior experience (otherwise training would take years and be uneconomic) and reasonable qualifications, as well as a full UK driving licence. You can’t just train up anybody for most of these roles.
I thought it was to ‘take back control’ of immigration.
This is what controlled immigration looks like. Temporary work visas to plug skills gaps.
Not all Brexiteers are xenophobes, some voted for liberty.
There are not enough people of working age in the U.K.
This shouldn’t be a surprise – it was warned about repeatedly during the referendum campaign.
Shortage? LOL
Try giving and of them a cal and asking – even look at CF’s network build program – they don’t seem to want to take anyone on i’ve been trying for months!
Demand will vary depending upon the location and which operators are working there. CityFibre also outsource most of their build to contractors, so it may be better to ask the contractors directly.
Thanks I didn’t know that – their website is kinda misleading there.
The positions CF hire for directly usually require relevant experience. In common with many they handle many of the more ‘senior’ tasks themselves and outsource other things to subcontractors.
Firstly, any “engineer” recruited from outside the UK is likely to be UK equivalent “Chartered” – Europe and other countries protect the term engineer (the UK doesn’t)
Secondly (and this is from someone who trained as a telecoms technician 50 years ago and this was a three year stint) – why aren’t we training these technicians in the UK? I’m constantly being told that the UK telecoms market is awash with cash – spend some of it on training UK nationals, perhaps?
Maybe ask First Mile Networks about that one, John.
Can someone please post a link on how to get training to do this job please. As in what is the course called.
Is t just me or is this just opening the door to offloading highly qualified and expensive engineers and replacing them with lower quality or lower paid individuals.
Really must be a sin in the UK to invest in people anymore.
It’s just you. Demand for those guys is high, supply limited regardless. UK will be competing for those highly qualified and experienced people, not trying to uproot and replace with cheaper labour. Won’t be any cheaper labour, these skills are in demand worldwide.
This is more about that we’ve nearly full employment, 2 million job vacancies across the economy and an extremely risky economic policy that relies on more growth than we’ve the people to deliver.
Still if you’ve some way we can magic up the people to fill those 2 million vacancies, some highly skilled and requiring experience you can’t get in a classroom, without immigration you could make a lot of money, JP.
Putting two ends of a fibre into a machine and pressing the fuse button is not a “highly skilled” job. I’m sorry but it’s not. Nor is pulling cables through ducting. I very much value what they do, and appreciate them. But can we please stop pretending that these people went and studied a degree or something or had years of training when in reality they attended a one week course on fibre splicing.
It is NOT a difficult/complex/highly skilled task. Why do people act like these cable runners are geniuses? Now someone will no doubt complain i’m being mean or something; that is not my intention, i’m just surprised whenever I see people claiming that fibre pullers are highly skilled. I could no joke teach my 8 year old how to do it, in fact she has already. Is my daughter now highly skilled because she fused the two fibres between our outbuildings? I’ll have to go tell her.
I’m glad you think it’s as simple as splicing 2 fibres Billy but frankly you haven’t got a scooby doo.
It’s very much a skilled/semi-skilled role.
They require a bunch of training which can’t be done overnight. You need all kinds of H&S tickets to do this kind of work including things like NRSWA accreditation.
As an example the process for Openreach hiring fibre engineers takes nearly a year from start to finish in many cases.
The cost of the training can be eye watering.
You need a ticket to work below ground level/in a trench. You need another ticket to work up a pole. Additional tickets required for anything involving working on the highway or traffic management.
Virgin for example don’t have training centres all over the country so they send all their Scottish trainees South of the border.
They have to pay all the travel and accommodation during the training process.
It cost over 5 figures to train each member of staff.
Despite paying trainees nearly £25k starting salary and giving them a bunch of new skills and qualifications less than 2/3rd’s of Virgins new starts last more than 12 months.
Someone needs to contact the government immediately and tell them there’s no need to allow fibre engineers in from Europe.
There’s no longer an acute labour shortage in the UK, particularly in this sector.
Billy’s 8 year old daughter can splice a fibre, the problem is solved.
I’m off to tell the bank to hire my teenager as a currency trader. After all he’s been to the post office to swap his dollars back to sterling after our holiday. That’s how it works right?
It’s really not as simple as “why not train UK staff”.
They have tried that.
The UK labour market is desperate for staff in dozens of sectors.
Telecoms staff is an area where they are particularly struggling.
There are simply too few candidates applying for too many roles.
Local bus firms are offering to train new drivers for free, including a £1,000 sign on bonus.
They are willing to pay already qualified drivers £2,000 signing on fee.
Firms are willing to pay for staff to go through HGV qualifications due to the massive shortage of qualified HGV drivers.
Virgin Media had a recruitment event here in March to hire staff to train as fibre engineers for their ongoing Project Lightning and Project Mustang.
They wanted 22 candidates to train with zero experience necessary and were offering over £25k annual salary.
Only 15 people applied and completed the video interview and only 12 went on to the next stage of the application process.
Due to the lack of applicants Virgin are having to repeat the recruitment process all over again.
The main reason for this labour shortage is Brexit, compounded by the pandemic.
It has been great for some who are looking for work or are looking to retrain and change sectors. Wages are up (though less than inflation) and there are more opportunities available with free training provided.
It has been an absolute disaster for some employers, particularly those who require low paid, low skilled labour.
The care sector, cleaning, hospitality and agriculture have been some of the worst hit sectors.
Maybe the reason new people leave so soon after being trained, or even dont apply in the first place is because working out in the field is absolutely awful in telecoms. Nearly all lone working, rain or shine, hot or freezing, and often faced with impossible tasks for little money if any at all if the task cant be done due to H&S and regulations (flat roof anyone?) Contracting is evil in telecoms, and as Openreach do, they give all the crap jobs to contractors and then they dont give the contractor the tools or skills to complete the job. Often 0 pay for 3 hours work trying to get the job done, but unable to do so. Then when the contractor calls managers for help, all they get back is that its the engineers problem, tough titty, it is what it is…..
Would you mind considering sourcing fibre techs from Kenya. This is a great opportunity and I am personally interested, I believe that l am a good fit to join the able team in UK. We handle daily rollout design interpretation/implementation, OSP and ISP works, Daily Full compliance to health and safety procedures, no work without approved safety work permit, aiming zero incidences at all times. Quality fibre splicing, management and splitter core power provisioning. Basic OLT and ONU installation and configurations in the GPON structure. Troubleshooting faults to resolve LOS and other network alarms.