MORE than 200 jobs at an RAC call centre in the region will be gone by the end of April, it has emerged.

Norwich Union owner Aviva took over the RAC last year for £1.1bn and in August announced it was cutting more than 1,700 jobs - including hundreds in the North-East - as part of an £80m cost-cutting plan.

RAC's insurance arm employed 215 workers at its Beaumont Street call centre, in Darlington, and they were among the job cuts.

Through non-replacement of staff, and some redundancies in the past two weeks, more than 100 jobs have already gone in the town.

There are about 110 left and they will leave by the end of April, when the centre will close and work will be transferred to Bristol.

Management consultants Right Coutts have been employed to help workers find new jobs, and are on site to help with CVs and finding out about job opportunities.

A jobs fair was held at the centre yesterday, with 20 employers including Orange, Npower, Barclaycard and Sainsburys taking part.

Call centre operations manager Annette Walker said the fair had been a success, with some workers lining up interviews for new jobs.

She said: "I think a lot of employers in the area realise the calibre of people we have got in here and many of them have left for new jobs already.

"Some people had left already but the notice period for redundancy started on February 5 so we have had about 20 people take their redundancy and leave since then.

"We have a further 25 people due to leave to go to new jobs between now and March, and we are trying to let people leave as and when they need to for new jobs.

"But we have to balance that with moving the work over to Bristol, and it depends how their recruitment process is going.

"All the staff here should be really proud of the work they have done, because they have actually increased service levels even since the redundancies were announced."

She said staff had the option of transferring to Bristol, but none took this up because of the distance involved.