Just had an email from BT to say that they are closing my email account on 14 April as I don't take my broadband from them. The only thing I buy from them is BT Sports on the Sky platform.
Apparently I can keep my email with them if I pay £1.60 per month.
I'd be grateful for any advice. How easy is it to switch to gmail for example?

Easy. I use outlook.com (formerly aka hotmail) rather than allow my email anywhere near gmail, though.

As simple as going to your e-mail provider of choice and following the onscreen instructions to create an account.

The real pain in the proverbials however is keeping hold of your old BT e-mail messages and informing all those who need to know of your change of e-mail address.

If you use an e-mail client on your computer, such as Thunderbird, you can set that up to download all your BT messages to your PC so you have copies available should you lose access to them online.

Otherwise you would have to explore what options there are for exporting or forwarding the messages to somewhere you can keep them safe.

Thanks for the advice. Will try gmail first of all. It seems to offer the possibility of moving my emails and contacts to them.

I'm not overly joyed by the need to sign up to Premimum Mail, but it's free for the first year so I might as well bite the bullet... I'll worry about switching some other time.