Crawley resident receives British Empire medal for service to national infrastructure during Covid

Mr Carroll works for Openreach customer service team and specialises in getting complex installations back on track or speeds things up when critically important requests come in.

Mr Carroll is originally from Yorkshire but has been living in Pound Hill for 20 years. He has been married to his wife Laurna for 15 years and has two daughters, Ophelia seven and Tallulah nine.

He has been heavily relied upon by the company and its customers’ to help keep circuit delivery on track.

During the pandemic, Mr Carroll has played a fundamental part in keeping the entire nation connected, while also keeping his colleagues and society safe.

He works very closely with the communications provider partners and has worked tirelessly throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to guarantee exceptionally speedy connectivity to the Nightingale hospitals, vaccination centres and food distribution centres throughout the peak of the crisis and in many areas.

The customer service expert was instrumental in connecting 17 emergency Nightingale hospitals, circuit delivery for 48 testing sites and circuit delivery for 554 vaccination centres.

Mr Carroll said: “I’ve known for just about a month and it’s still a surprise. You don’t expect these things, you get paid for a job you do and anything on top is just a bonus. My director of customer service nominated me.

“I work for Openreach and my director put me forward last summer for the new year’s honours. I’m being honoured for service to national infrastructure during Covid. I’ve been establishing vaccination centres for the NHS. These sites experienced high-demand and didn’t have the bandwidth to cope with it.

“During Covid, there were a lot of extra things to do when entering sites which took time. The guys in the field were the real heroes with getting the sites up and running in 24-hours, when it normally takes anywhere between four to six weeks to establish a site.

“I have told close family but other than that I've kept it quite close to my chest.”

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