A COMPANY is flying high after winning an important contract to teach hundreds of RAF personnel how to use a computer.

Training organisation ClickHere has won a two-year contract to help staff at RAF Leeming and RAF Fylingdales improve their information technology skills.

Flying Officer Rob Jones, training development officer at RAF Leeming, said: " There are 1,800 service people here at Leeming alone, so we are confident there will be a strong take-up of the courses.

"The RAF, and similarly the other services, have a long history of pioneering training, and computer use is one of the new key skills now incorporated into training at all levels and ranks."

The contract involves 132 training days at RAF Leeming, a Tornado F3 fighter base, and 12 at Fylingdales, a ballistic missile early warning station.

A former conference room at RAF Leeming is being converted into an information technology (IT) suite and equipped with computers ready for the training to start in June. Fylingdales already has an IT training suite.

Caroline Hughes, the founder and director of ClickHere, a Billingham company, said: "We are delighted to win a contract with the Royal Air Force. We look upon this as winning another blue-chip client - and in competition with the best training organisations in the northern region."

The training is being led by ClickHere's Susanne Convery, who before joining the training organisation ran an interactive learning centre at the Nato base in Rheindahlen, on the German-Dutch border.

The centre provided computer-based training as part of the British Army's resettlement programme for personnel leaving the military.

She said: "The training will be tutor-led, covering basic concepts of IT, file management, databases, word processing, spreadsheets, Internet and email, and presentations."