BT Opens Final Office in Manchester to Finish UK Workplace Transformation
Telecoms and broadband giant BT today claims to have achieved the final step in their 5-year long “Better Workplace” transformation programme, which has involved modernising and consolidating the number of offices they have (going from around 300 and down to nearly 30 key locations), by opening a new office – the ‘Four New Bailey’ building – in Manchester.
Four New Bailey will house up to 2,000 colleagues from across BT Group and has been fitted with the latest technology. It also boasts a rooftop terrace offering panoramic views of the city’s skyline. Sitting on the banks of the River Irwell, it replaces BT’s former office site in Deansgate and adds to the company’s other North West locations in Liverpool, Accrington and Warrington.
Manchester joins other locations including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Dundee and the London HQ in opening its doors to a newly built BT hub. Multi-million-pound refurbishments have also been carried out at other locations, including Belfast, Doncaster, Glasgow and Newcastle.
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Admittedly, all of this does rather gloss over the impact on jobs, which in some areas has resulted in redundancies because not everybody will have been able to migrate into the new sites. But for BT, there have also been cost savings and efficiency improvements.
Allison Kirkby, BT Group CEO, said:
“The opening of our new Manchester office is a significant milestone on the journey to transform BT and our office spaces around the UK.
We’ve invested heavily to provide best-in-class office spaces for our people across the country, reflecting how critical we are to every region of the UK. The broader economic effect from our offices, our people and our spend with UK suppliers is worth £23bn to the nation’s economy and beyond our own people we support around 212,000 jobs in the wider UK economy. And this is in addition to the economic contribution from the full fibre broadband network we are building, calculated to be worth £72bn to the UK’s economy by 2030.
As I’ve met colleagues from across the company at our new and refurbished locations, I’m impressed and proud of the vital work they do in their local communities, and of the role BT plays nationwide.”
Allison highlights a new “independent report” by Hatch (here), which covers BT Group’s role in the UK as an employer and investor. It shows that the company directly employs more than 69,700 people and 15,500 contractors in the UK, including engineers building networks, teams in offices supporting customers, and people working in our retail stores.
More broadly, the company is said to support around 212,000 jobs and spends £9.6 billion with UK suppliers and subcontractors, many of which are small businesses. Speaking of which, Openreach’s up to £15bn investment into rolling out a full fibre (FTTP) broadband network is also said to be worth £72bn to the UK’s economy by 2030.
However, it’s always wise to take such forecasts with a pinch of salt, as accurately gauging the economic impact of faster broadband technologies is notoriously difficult, not least because most users won’t be starting from a point of zero connectivity.
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The list of brand-new buildings to BT include: (BT Group HQ) One Braham, London; Three Snowhill, Birmingham; Assembly, Bristol; New Bailey, Manchester; Capital Quarter, Cardiff; Stanford House, Warrington; West Marketgait, Dundee; Endeavour, Sheffield; Plazza, Liverpool and (Openreach HQ) Gracechurch Street, London.
The list of refurbished offices include: Bangor, Plymouth, Glasgow, North Tyneside, Belfast, Doncaster and Newcastle (Gosforth).
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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Plush new office. Hope those that were made redundant received a good final payoff
All new offices, especially new builds such as this, are ‘plush’. They have to be to attract tenants, given the competitive nature of the office market – and Manchester is VERY competitive. The fittings / fixtures / appearance of the offices have no impact on the pay-out to any person who has (sadly) lost their role (that of course being different for those who take voluntary redundancy as that’s a choice they make, not one imposed). Nor do they have any bearing on the employees of said offices, except to make it a nicer place to work and thus attract talent.
It is in the city of Salford not Manchester.
The city of Salford is in Greater Manchester – just like the city of Westminster is in Greater London! So, you think Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Sq.,the Shard, etc. are not in Lindon!!
BeeTee, how condescending. I was being sarcastic.
Sarcastic as in you actually hope people don’t get a good redundancy payment? What a lovely sentiment to go out of your way to actually express.
@BeeTee
Sadly your knowledge of BT seems non existent, very few people are made compulsory redundant they are instead FORCED to take a voluntary package as the financial incentive between taking a statutory redundancy payment and the ‘voluntary’ is huge, the fact is the employee is being made redundant, the choice to go ‘voluntarily’ and here’s a better severance package, is that particularly a choice as you put it?
Another point, the better workplace programme while it may attract talent also hinders it as not all parts of the BT Group are based in every building, BT networks has no office based presence pretty much north of Leeds and Manchester. The buildings that have closed are still very much part of the BT estate, difference is now those buildings are decaying at a rapid rate as people aren’t in them reporting issues anymore, many of which house networking equipment.
I neither have, nor have I claimed to have, knowledge of any BT systems or processes. However, there is no such thing as ‘forced’ voluntary severance. Legally it cannot be done. Voluntary is exactly that, voluntary – or are you changing the dictionary definition to suit yourself? I would argue that if someone is being made redundant, and has the choice between a statutory pay-out and ‘voluntary’ pay-out, then yes, most, if not all, will take the ‘voluntary’ pay-out if it’s higher. That absolutely makes sense. And you are correct, that is not a real choice – only a choice between the lesser of two evils. However, in all the companies I have ever known, they ask people to volunteer to leave first. And then at some later point, they may still remove others, but at a different pay-off. That’s a choice in the first instance, as they can choose not to leave. But if they then still get removed at a later point, the company still wins. Believe me, I am not defending this here, it’s sad for anyone to lose a source of income (and possibly pride and hope). But also you can’t just change the definition of something to make it work – it;’s either truly voluntary or it’s not. If BT claim people leave voluntarily, but are really only offering a choice between two options, both of which end with someone without a job, then that’s illegal and should be called out. If you know that’s happening, then you should whistleblow. That however is on your conscience, not mine.
I would be interested to know how many buildings are going as part of the 2030 exit strategy. I worked for BT at the time of the millennium when the dot com bubble burst causing a black hole in their finances when they sold all their estate to Trillium on a leaseback scheme. The deal was a 30 year deal, most exchanges are now coming to the consideration of what happens next.
There were some proposals to exit buildings published a couple of years ago but that’s all gone quiet. I suspect a lot will be in commercial confidence due to the vast sums involved.
It would be nice to see around some of the old estate, there’s such a rich history. The building I was based in had original parquet flooring, brown and green wall tiles, and a huge Victorian staircase right in front of the entrance turnstiles installed (badly, chipping original tiling) in preparation for the then new OBASS access control system.
These days security is nowhere near what it used to be, back then we had emergency response control and you could expect rapid police attendance for any unsecured access. The YouTube urban explorer video at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kfOzyIib7wU is a case in point that the legacy network away from modern fibre handover sites are almost not worth protecting.
The exchange exit plans are available.
125us,sarcastic in a way that went over your head…