UNION officials were last night trying to assess the impact on schools after the first wave of civil service job losses at a North-East site began.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) revealed earlier this year that 100 positions at Mowden Hall, in Darlington, were to be cut.

The move came as part of a major shake-up of the Government department, with the Darlington jobs among 800 to be shed across the country.

Those cuts will be made over the next 18 months and a further 610 jobs are to be scrapped between 2006 and 2008.

That news sparked concern among the Darlington workforce that the entire site, which is presently occupied by 590 DfES staff, could be shut.

Chancellor Gordon Brown's recent announcement that 104,000 civil service jobs were to go has also sparked fears for the site.

But the most pressing concern now facing the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) is the impact of the first set of losses on education in the region.

The Darlington office plays a crucial role in child protection procedures and student grants, as well as providing the main IT support for the department.

PCS Darlington branch secretary Terry Hegarty said workers were already leaving their posts and union bosses were anxious to find out if the service to the public would be hit.

"What we still haven't got to the bottom of, is finding out how functions for the public will be affected," he said. "All we can do is keep up the pressure. We want to know the hard facts - what the impact on schools and local education authorities will be."

He said: "There is an awful lot of uncertainty on the site at the moment. We have heard that there will be no site closures, but nobody is prepared to commit themselves to anything after 2006."

The DfES said that there were no plans for closures of sites in the foreseeable future.