FOUR bright sparks from Wiltshire are set to begin their engineering careers with SSE after beating thousands of hopefuls to a place on the company’s prestigious apprenticeship schemes.

Thomas Waterland, 17, from Warminster and Daniel Brown, 22, from Trowbridge are part of a cohort of 45 trainees who will be learning how to maintain 77,000km of overhead power lines and underground cables, keeping the lights on for customers across central southern England.

Also successful were Nathan Tobin, 18, from Shaftesbury, and Jordan Baker, 21, from Lyneham.

Colin Nicol, managing director of SSE, said: “Around half of the energy sector’s workforce is set to leave or retire by 2023, so recruiting talented and committed people is absolutely vital, not just for Southern Electric Power Distribution but for the whole energy industry. By investing around £80,000 per recruit, we are also investing in the people who will be responsible for planning, developing and maintaining the electrical infrastructure of central southern England for future decades.”

The new recruits have spent their first week meeting other starters and managers across the company and getting an overview of the cable jointing, fitting, electrical installation and other engineering jobs they will be doing in the future.

Over the next year, they will benefit from work experience across the business combined with either theoretical study at specialist centres of education around the south of England or a Foundation Degree in Electrical Power Engineering at Aston University.