RESIDENTS on a Sunderland estate are being given the chance to train for work in the city's booming call centre industry.

A new call centre suite has been opened at Pennywell, which is undergoing a major facelift to give the estate a better future.

The centre is in the Hylton Road offices of Pennywell Community Business, and has been set up to meet the demand of firms based in the city for trained staff.

The suite has eight computers and attached telephones with headsets. The software allows trainee operators to learn how to answer calls while calling up information on their computer screens.

The training is provided by experienced tutors and call centre staff and is free to people living in the area covered by the third round of Single Regeneration Budget funding.

Pennywell Community Business is already running a successful call centre training programme that has helped more than 90 local people land jobs.

The training includes customer service and telephone techniques.

Carol Sykes, senior tutor and coordinator of the training programme, said: "As a training provider, we have built ourselves a reputation for delivering quality call centre courses.

"A lot of our students are guaranteed interviews with the call centres, simply on completion of our training.

"Because of this, we wanted to make sure we had the best systems available. The suite has the latest local area network system, very similar to the type used in call centres across the region.Once people are familiar with this they can be sure they'll stand every chance of getting work.

"Not only does the training suite give people the opportunity to train on a system identical to the call centres but it also gives them an idea of exactly what it's like to work in a call centre environment."