MBORC Update

MBORC lifted from one SOM area in the South and declared in four further locations in the North of England and Scotland – 17 of 73 total SOM areas now affected

We are committed to keeping MBORC declarations in place for as short a period as possible and to reviewing the application of MBORC regularly. For this reason, further to our communication to you yesterday, 11 July, we want to share a further update on MBORC status.

As at 14:00 today, Thursday 12 July we have been able to lift MBORC in:

Truro

Regretfully, we are in a position where we have to declare MBORC in a further four Senior Operations Manager (SOM) areas in the North of England and Scotland, with effect from 14:00 today. These areas are:

South East Scotland
Durham and Tees Valley
York
Leeds and West Yorkshire

These areas have seen high fault volumes throughout June, but in an effort to avoid having to declare MBORC in these locations, we took pre-emptive measures including the movement and redirection of resource to keep the work stack within manageable levels – and we were winning. However, these areas have all seen two marked and prolonged periods of extreme weather since 1st July. This has now had a significant cumulative effect on the repair work stack, despite our initial success in containing the impact of the bad weather.

This is particularly disappointing for the teams who have worked flat out against a continued battering from the weather. In the SOM areas declared, repair volumes have increased by as much as 86 per cent since the beginning of July, and as much as 150 per cent since the beginning of June. This was compounded by a spike in fault intakes over last weekend, triggered by more wet and stormy weather, with intakes between 35 and 60 per cent above the average in UK North for this time of year.

To confirm, MBORC now applies in 17 of our 73 SOM areas. To remind customers, in addition to the newly added areas, MBORC remains in place in:

Bournemouth
Brighton
Portsmouth
Highlands and Islands
Northumberland and Wearside
Leicester
Derby
Birmingham
Wolverhampton
North East Scotland
Cumbria
Shrewsbury and Hereford
Nottingham

We continue to monitor both the weather and our service position closely and will provide further updates as and when the situation changes.

Comparison lists for SOM patches to exchange areas can be found on www.openreach.co.uk and by following the Service Updates link shown bottom left under Quick links.

Your cooperation in using all available trackers and online facilities before considering an escalation is immeasurably helpful in such challenging conditions – please continue to do so wherever you can, unless you need to speak to someone in an emergency.

Please look out for your invitation to the follow up Service and Escalations call scheduled for Wednesday 18 July at 16:30, where there will be an opportunity to discuss MBORC and service in general on the call.

Regards,

Openreach Communications