Call centre to create 1,000 jobs up North

Up to 1,000 jobs will be created with the opening of a UK call centre in the North of England serving major telecoms companies.

Garlands Call Centres, which had a £50m turnover last year, will open the centre in South Shields in Tyneside in April 2008, initially employing 100 people and building up to 1,000 by 2008/09.

The £15m centre will initially serve a major telecoms and broadband company, an existing client of Garlands, and fulfil future contracts with other telecoms companies.

Garlands has grown from a few hundred employees in 2001 to 3,200 today, with clients including Vodafone, Virgin Mobile and TalkTalk.

A spokesman for Garlands said the company was committed to continuing its growth of operations in the North, on top of its existing operations in Tees Valley, Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees.

He said the company would also open a small operation in South Africa this year, which would run alongside its UK operations.

Garlands CEO Chey Garland said: "Garlands is committed to building its business in the UK. We have ambitious plans for 2008 and beyond - and look forward to continuing to build our operations in the North East."

The call centre opening coincides with an announcement by Manchester-based telecoms provider Unicom that it plans to create 100 jobs this year.

Unicom, which employs 500 people, will base most of the new jobs in administration, credit control, customer service, IT, and sales teams in Manchester.