ABOUT 100 staff have been made redundant after a North-East training company plunged into administration.

Tees Valley-based City Centre Training (Northern) Ltd (CCT) collapsed after hitting financial difficulty and called in administrators Tenon Recovery on Wednesday.

The Northern Echo understands that about 100 staff were made redundant on the day.

CCT, which is based in Thornaby, near Stockton, provides a range of training programmes, including apprenticeships and NVQs in vocational subjects, such as engineering, business administration and retail.

The company has regional training centres in Middlesbrough, Thornaby, Darlington, and Gateshead, as well as in Southport, Merseyside, Leyland and Oldham, both Lancashire, and Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

A spokesman said alternative arrangements had been made for all the learners who used the company, and they had all been notified of the situation.

He said: "The likelihood is the learners will be passed towards an alternative provider. A plan is in action already to ensure that happens very, very quickly."

He said all the staff who had been made redundant had been given forms to enable them to claim statutory redundancy pay through the Department of Trade and Industry. He said he could not comment on the exact reasons why the company had gone into administration.

"We are just getting our heads around the facts and figures. It (CCT) has obviously got financial difficulties, the detail of which will become apparent," he said.

Former CCT employee Maria Hart, 67, who worked at the Darlington branch, was due to retire this year. She said: "I was quite upset. Everyone else gets a bunch of flowers when they retire; I got a Department of Trade and Industry form."

She said she had been concerned about the possibility of redundancy for some time.

"It started in March, when we had a salary a week late, then in April we were paid two-thirds, then the remaining third. They kept saying that everything was all right," she said.

Another former employee, who did not want to be named, said: "They got us down on Wednesday, got the administrators in and told us. I am gutted."