AN £800,000 centre aimed at improving disabled people's job prospects is to open on Teesside.

The Disability Employment Centre will provide skills training for 500 people a year, serving the whole of the Tees Valley, when it is built in Middlesbrough.

In partnership with Middlesbrough Borough Council, the Shaw Trust will assume responsibility for Ayresome Industries, a factory employing disabled people on sheltered placements to make UPVC windows and other household items. It will build the Disability Employment Centre next to the factory.

Middlesbrough council's commissioner for social care, Councillor Eddie Dryden, said: "The centre will help create a level playing field for disabled people in the jobs market."