SATELLITE broadcaster BSkyB confirmed yesterday that it is to open a call centre, employing 800 staff, in the North-East.

The firm will open the centre in Gallowgate, Newcastle, creating jobs for sales and customer service staff, in October.

As well as the 400 new jobs, a further 400 workers from The Listening Company(TLC) in Newcastle, which Sky presently outsources call centre work to, will transfer to become permanent employees of the satellite broadcaster.

TLC, a subsiduary of global services company Serco with eight contact centres across the country including at All Saints Business Centre and St James' Gate in Newcastle, will continue to work alongside Sky on other contracts.

A BSkyB spokeswoman said: "We work with TLC and some of the staff who carry out work for us are going to transfer to our new site.

"They will have Sky contracts and become permanent employees of ours.

"With the 400 new staff it is going to happen gradually over a period of time.

"Recruitment is now open and potential employees can go onto the Sky website for details.

"These things do take time and there is a training process to go through so it will take about six months."

BSkyB said it needed to expand its call centre capacity because of increased work, with customer numbers rising to more than 10m, and Newcastle was "the obvious place" for its ninth UK centre.

The group, which employs 16,500 people across the UK and Ireland, presently has three centres in Scotland, two in Yorkshire, and one each in Manchester and Somerset as well as its head office in London .

The spokeswoman said: "We are trying to get centres in different places around the country.

"We recognise our customers come from all over the UK so it makes sense.

"Our business is obviously growing and we have customers taking more products, not just TV but broadband as well and we recognised that as we get more customers it is better for them to speak to Sky people in-house."

The North-East also benefits from the region's reputation as a leading call centre industry hub.

There are approximately 10,000 people employed in contact centres in Sunderland alone, generating about £150m in salaries for the city's economy.

It emerged last year that call's to the main London switchboard of BSkyB's fellow broadcaster the BBC are also handled by a team of Siemens call centre staff in Middlesbrough.

The spokeswoman added that the skills already in existence in the region was another reason for choosing it.

"We think there is a good workforce in the Newcastle area," she said.

The firm is to take three floors in the Wellbar Central building.

The refit will also see new meeting and training rooms for other areas of Sky's business such as installation engineers, retail services and Sky News.

BSkyB's contact centres chief Chris Stylianou added: "Our customer contact centres are the lifeblood of our business and we've had much success in the city to date, so opening our own premises here is a natural step."