A further 40 jobs could be brought to Teesside following the management buyout of an environmental consultancy firm.

Encia Group, which provides remediation and demolition services to brownfield site developers, plans to upgrade its Middlesbrough office.

The expanded operation would see a greater range of services on offer to its clients.

Encia was formed out of the purchase of AIG's Consulting and Remediation businesses and has offices in Middlesbrough, Wetherby and Wigan.

The deal, which took ten months to complete, will see one-stop-shop environmental services made available to house builders and the public sector across the North.

The Middlesbrough arm of the business employs ten people but Encia plans to upgrade the work of the Teesside outfit to bring it in line with the other two sites.

The Wetherby and Wigan operations currently check for contamination on sites, carry out demolition and clean-up work as well as waste management, civil engineering and design and planning services.

A spokeswoman said: "We are looking at developing the Middlesbrough office to carry out all these services.

"At the moment we have ten staff working there but that should expand quite rapidly. It really could go quite wild."