BT Propose to Cut up to 90 Jobs from Belfast HQ in Northern Ireland
Telecoms and UK broadband giant BT Group has reportedly proposed to make up to 90 staff redundant from their Belfast office, which is currently home to 2,000 colleagues from across the company, including EE, BT Business and Openreach. The group currently employs a total of 3,400 from across Northern Ireland.
The move is perhaps not all that surprising, particularly since BT has made no secret of the fact that they expect their total labour force to shrink from 130,000 a year ago to between 75,000 and 90,000 by 2030. But many of those losses are likely to come from Openreach as the operator reaches the conclusion of their £15bn FTTP broadband roll-out, which aims to cover “up to” 30 million premises by 2030 (currently over 17m).
In this case, BT appears to be planning to “transfer some of the work they do” at the Belfast site to other offices, which may on the flip side create some new roles elsewhere. A spokesperson for BT confirmed (BBC News) it was in discussions “with anyone affected by our proposals and, if we go ahead, we have shared other opportunities in the wider Belfast office“.
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BT added that their Belfast site is still considered a “strategic location” and that they would continue to invest in the region. The operator only recently completed a multi-million-pound refurbishment of the Riverside Tower office in Belfast.
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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BT made it clear to affected staff yesterday (myself included) that majority of work is being moved India.
You can thank the budget for that ! Good luck to you and your future
What twaddle, BT are doing it simply because they can. 20 years ago they outsourced parts of operator services such as directories and fault management to see how it went. They got away with it because consumers tolerated it and shareholders wanted the company to reduce cost. As services developed in the UK and NI they were local but BT are now rationalising again as they do every few years under every government of every variety. It’s not great for staff, but this is a corporate decision they do every now and again as part of general rationalisation under any government.
BT groups job cuts over the past 12 months have been brutal
Not to mention the 100’s of managers in Openreach who have been told they must take a redundancy package or apply for a handful of jobs, some of which are a demotion with no pay and protection