More than 50 new engineering jobs are being created across Norfolk and Suffolk as Openreach steps up its efforts to implement full fibre broadband.

The East Anglian jobs are among 2,500 new roles that are being created nationally. The roles will be filled throughout 2021.

In Norfolk 21 vacancies will be on offer and in Suffolk there will be 32.

Openreach regional director, Laura Whelan, said: “As a major employer and infrastructure builder, we believe Openreach can play a leading role in helping the UK to build back better and greener.

"Our full fibre network build is going faster than ever and we’re now looking for people across the East of England to build a career with Openreach and help us upgrade broadband connections and continue improving service levels throughout the region.

"We’re also investing in our supply chain, which will support the creation of thousands of jobs based all over the UK."

Over the last two years, Openreach has created more than 6,500 trainee engineering roles.

The announcement came as the firm hit a record build rate on its plans to implement full-fibre broadband into 20 million homes and businesses by the mid-2020s.

Openreach now say they are now reaching 4,000 homes per week with full-fibre broadband.

The construction is now underway in dozens of locations across the East of England, including Norwich and now in more hard-to-reach areas including Caister-on-Sea, Kings Lynn and Hunstanton in Norfolk and Bungay and Haverhill in Suffolk.

Separately, Openreach has made a commitment to upgrade all of its fleet of 27,000 vehicles to electric by 2030.

Ms Whelan said: "We know the network we’re building can deliver a host of green benefits – from consuming less power to enabling more home working and fewer commuting trips - and we’re going to take that a step further, by committing to build and maintain that network using state of the art electric vehicles across our 27,000-strong fleet. We’ll have completely transitioned to EVs by 2030.”