Eight Recruits for Yorkshire's Emergency Gas Service

Eight engineers have joined the gas emergency service in West Yorkshire.

Gas firm United Utilities has taken on the staff to work at its Bradford, Leeds and Heckmondwike depots.

United Utilities runs the region’s free round-the-clock gas emergency service on behalf of Northern Gas Networks, the company which owns the region’s 36,000km of gas mains.

The jobs will involve responding to members of the public who dial the national gas emergency number on 0800 111 999.

Engineering operations manager Peter Christie said the company currently employed around 310 first call engineers throughout the whole of the North East, Yorkshire and northern Cumbria, as well as a number of contract staff.

The new recruits are former contract staff who are being taken onto the company’s direct labour force. The move gives them more job security, more development opportunities and benefits such as pensions and share schemes.

“We operate a service which is always on call for the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That means responding to reports of gas leaks and dealing with incidents where people have lost their supply. It’s a job we pride ourselves on doing very well and, of course, it’s vital to make sure our system stays safe and reliable for the millions of people who rely on it every day,” he said.
This is the second time United Utilities has recruited emergency engineers since it took over the running of the gas mains in 2005. Last spring, 21 emergency engineers joined the service. The company is also preparing to launch its third apprentice recruitment campaign.

Although there is no shortage of emergency engineers in the region, since taking over the service from Transco United Utilities has decided it would like to employ more of its workforce direct.

United Utilities is one of the UK’s biggest utility companies.

Please visit our websites www.unitedutilities.com or www.northerngas.co.uk