BT UK to Shut Older Contact Centres in Leeds and Exeter
Telecoms and broadband giant BT has confirmed to ISPreview that, as part of their ongoing UK programme to modernise and consolidate the number of offices they have, they’ve decided to close their Contact Centres in Leeds and Exeter over the “coming months“. The move is expected to impact hundreds of jobs, but many will be consolidated into more modern sites.
In terms of BT’s Exeter site at Exbridge House, the operator is proposing to relocate workers to their Plymouth office, which has benefitted from a huge upgrade. This is deemed to be a better approach than spending big to bring their existing site in Exeter up to the right standard.
BT believes the Plymouth office is within a commutable distance of the current office in Exeter, although inevitably some staff members will disagree with that. BT has thus pledged to work with those individuals on other available options, or to help cover some of their travel costs if eligible.
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A BT Group spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We’re consulting with colleagues and trade unions on our proposals to relocate colleagues at our Exeter contact centre to our Plymouth office, which benefited from a multi-million-pound upgrade in 2022. Around 900 colleagues are already based at our Plymouth office. By relocating our colleagues to Plymouth we can ensure they can work from a state of the art workplace and have greater career opportunities within a larger location, which aren’t available today.
BT Group continues to make record investments in the South West’s infrastructure helping to transform and futureproof the region’s digital economy, including investing in Openreach’s full fibre network and EE’s 5G mobile network.”
The situation at one of BT’s Leeds offices on Marlborough Street is very similar to the one in Exeter. The plan here is to relocate colleagues into either their refurbished Doncaster office or their brand-new Sheffield office, both of which are already home to thousands of colleagues. None of this will impact BT’s other Leeds office in Sovereign Street.
A BT Group spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We’re consulting on proposals to relocate colleagues based at one of our Leeds offices (Marlborough Street) to other offices in the area. This includes moving to our refurbished Doncaster office or our brand-new Sheffield office, both home to thousands of colleagues. By relocating our colleagues to other state of the art workplaces, we will be able to offer better career opportunities and modern facilities within a larger location, which aren’t available today.
BT Group continues to make record investments, as well as in our offices, in infrastructure in the region, helping to transform and futureproof the area’s digital economy.”
BT said there would be no impact to customers from either of these proposals. Credits to one of our readers (Ed) for spotting the change.
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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Google maps have the distance between the Exeter and Plymouth sites as 38.6 miles – although that will obviously be more for anyone not living in the office. I wonder how far it’d have to be to count as an “unreasonable adjustment”.
When I worked at VM, when the closed sites I think the rules were anything less than 10 miles no compensation, 10-35 miles payment towards travel for 3 years, anything over 35 they offered redundancy if you didn’t want to commute. Assume the travel expenses support was given to people who wanted to stay. Not sure if that was a legal thing or a contractual thing.
If you are living on the Plymouth side of Exeter it might not be too bad, you might even be better off if you’re closer to Plymouth than Exeter, but if you’re on the far side then it will be a heck of a journey. That’s before you factor in the complexities of public transport. Leeds/Doncaster similarly. Either way, commiserations to those affected.
Typically expect upto an additional 45 minutes travel each way. So if it takes someone 45 minutes each way to their current place of work , they would be expected to travel upto 90 mins each way to another office location!!!
Hi, BT used to base its travel time on 120 mins Home to Office, then 120 minutes Office to Home. Then had a minus time adjustment if your home was closer to the new location. As it use to state people working in London would travel one side of London to the other side, and this is reasonable travel time. They forgot as most of the UK infrastructure spending is in London, the rest of UK does not have very good transport links. Hence moving work from say Birmingham to Nottingham, not very easy to get to for a 08:00 start!!
I was made redundant last year when BT closed the Liverpool office. The nearest alternative was Warrington and 90 minutes commute was the criteria to qualify for redundancy, which due to horrendous transport links most did.
They won’t be expecting staff to go by train. It’s 2½-3h each way by public transport (the EE call centre is on Langage which isn’t brilliantly served). Driving from the middle of Exeter it’s hard to say how long it would take – if the roads are quiet then something like 45-50 mins is possible but they are often extremely wedged going in/out and that could easily double it or more. I suspect they will struggle to recruit new staff on the Plymouth side too. Feels very much like they’d be expecting some downsizing from this change.
Sad for those involved but im not surprised to see BT looking to consolidate their operations into several larger sites rather than lots of smaller sites, especially as some of their sites are also exchanges which may potentially become surplus to requirements as FTTP takes over and copper shuffles off its mortal coil.
In this case neither are exchanges, both are long standing offices within the BT group.
Exeter has been a BT office for quite a few years.
Leeds was a BT office until 2014 when it became a Plusnet branded office.
As you say though I expect they are wanting to consolidate and had the option to get out of these two locations. It seems the big call centre locations such as Doncaster, Newcastle and Darlington are where they are consolidating staff to.
I think the approaching expiry of leases and the wider adoption of AI within the BT Group are also factors in the selection of sites closures to reduce operating costs.
Exeter to/from Plymouth – more than an hour by train (which is probably what BT is expecting the relocated staff to use), a public transport service that cannot even achieve its 60pc on-time service target. Most existing staff will likely have to travel even further just to get to the daily journey start point. Not something I would want to go for.
The Plymouth EE call centre is at Plympton – a 35 minute bus ride from Plymouth railway station.
Plus, how many buses and trains back to Exeter will be available to staff ending a weekday shift at 9pm?
Public transport limitations make the transfer of many staff very unlikely due to the very long days that will result.
Indeed; there will be a whole set of obstacles for existing staff – which also include the extra commute time which will eat into their out of work activities.
So that’s the end to Plusnet as was then! Marlborough Street Leeds was Plusnet’s second site.
The bulk of the management and technical roles were transferred to BT back in 2020, leaving “Plusnet” mainly employing the contact centre staff. A lot of the developers then got transferred to TATA in 2023.
When BT opened their new office in Sheffield they closed the old Plusnet HQ in the centre where they had five floors of The Balance. A few HQ staff moved to the BT site but most of the old Plusnet teams had left as they moved jobs to other BT locations.
Before this move Plusnet’s contact centre staff we mainly in Doncaster and Leeds with some calls being answered by EE contact centres.
So now there will be nothing left of Plusnet other than a few people at the Sheffield BT office that is now their registered HQ and some people in BT/EE contact centres on Plusnet contracts/answering the phones for Plusnet.
Plusnet is just a brand and a package of services. BT Group do not need dedicated support staff for specific brands.
Yeah after speaking with both BT and EE staff it seems that the Leeds staff are the only staff that are multi trained and can correctly work both Plusnet EE and BT. My experience is EE and BT staff are not trained on plusnet accounts,billing or systems. Customers needing Plusnet support will be waiting exceptional waiting times if the need to call for support and they can say goodbye to speaking with an actual person
They know the majority of the Leeds employees won’t go for it. That journey for them is a nightmare. No parking onsite in Sheffield so they will have to rely on the train.
Also a bit of a joke to say we have an office 5 mins away from the one we’re closing but tough luck, you need to travel to one an hour away instead! I’d tell them where to go!
Ever since that refurb of the Plymouth site was completed, there hasn’t been enough room to get everyone in at once. That wasn’t a problem for over 18 months, but since the 60% in-office requirement was introduced in January it has been. On some days colleagues starting later are having to go back home and finish their shift there. If even a handful of Exeter decide to relocate, that’s only going to make a bad situation worse.
Odd, because it’s so unlike BT to not think something through…
Similar in Stoke, 150ish desks for 250 staff, with plans to hire more.
Thats intersting to know as someone on the chopping block in Exeter theyve made it a big thing saying that even if everyone from exeter went there is more then enough room for everyone…. clearly that is not the case
BT own a building on sovereign Street in Leeds that could easily house the Marlborough Street staff. It is a forced redundancy contrary to the statement from BT as Sheffield can not take any more staff as at legal capacity and Doncaster isn’t far off legal capacity plusnet customers will be hugely impacted as there will be NO assistance with billing queries once Marlborough Street closes good luck plusnet customers
Everyone internally knows these closures all by design planned carefully with distances so the majority of staff have to take the redundancy. They give it all the counter-proposal BS which they reject straight away. “ BT has thus pledged to work with those individuals on other available options” a complete facade. Despite jobs being available and agreements in place for them to redeploy you to any available nearby roles they don’t do anything to help. In my redundancy meeting I asked why they hadn’t come to me about the job close by and they said in the meeting (the send the lowest HR front person who knows nothing) said we have too many people in redundancy to look for jobs for you.