A FIRM specialising in complex roofing projects has secured £2m worth of contracts in the past month, as it continues to invest in young people.

The work secured by County Durham based European Roofing Systems (ERS) includes a £1.5m project in Hull and a £500,000 contract in Wakefield.

Despite its name the firm, based on the Aycliffe Business Park in Newton Aycliffe, also specialises in complex wall cladding projects.

The contract win in Hull followed a successful project for the same contractor in York, where ERS' work on a landmark building project for the city's university had involved a tear drop-shaped roof and a zinc rainscreen wall.

Managing director David Murphy said: "We have just finished one of the biggest contracts we have ever had for four buildings at York University, worth just over £3m.

"The roofs were relatively straightforward but the walls were quite complicated as they used zinc and copper.

"On the back of that we have secured the Hull job with the same contractor.

"We are starting on site in about four weeks and will be there into the new year, possibly March.

"The second contract at Wakefield is in two stages and will go on to the summer of next year."

Mr Murphy, who jointly founded the firm, which employs 15 people, said investment by the company in young people and their training was helping it to win work.

It employs 18-year-old Adam Nicholson as an apprentice and is putting staff members Stuart Outterside, 31, and Liam Murray, 30, through distance learning construction management degrees with Reading University.

In addition, all staff, including directors, are sent on regular training courses.

Mr Murphy said: "The work we do is advanced and companies come to us when it is a bit more complicated and challenging, that is why we have people studying for degrees.

"For the more mature members of staff, including myself, you can give the knowledge you have learned through experience to them at an earlier stage than when you picked it up yourself."

The firm was founded in Darlington in 1993 but following steady growth moved to Newton Aycliffe four years later