SECURITY specialist 2020 Vision Systems expects turnover to reach £3.5m this year after winning lucrative contracts in the region.

The company, based in North Shields, North Tyneside, recently piloted a surveillance system to detects suspicious behaviour at a North-East airport. It is now working on projects in Sunderland and Newcastle.

Its biggest deal, worth £1m, is to install closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in ten residential blocks in the Hendon area of Sunderland, with screens in each of the flats connected to a central control room in Leechmere.

2020 has already carried out about £750,000-worth of work improving security in the city in line with a regeneration scheme carried out by Sunderland Housing Group.

Peter Houlis, managing director of 2020 Vision, said: "CCTV is a great weapon in combating crime - arrest rates shoot through the roof when the police have access to the invaluable images cameras can capture."

Last year, the company announced it had secured an exclusive deal to provide security cameras that learn to recognise unusual movement in an area, while ignoring patterns using technology developed by Australian company iOmniscient.

General manager Peter Hargate said the system can be used in airports and railway stations to detect terrorism and crime.

"We recently completed a four-week trial at Newcastle International Airport, where the system was used to detect anyone walking in the wrong direction along the corridor between customs and the main hall," he said.

"The images are being analysed at the moment. We believe the potential for the system is huge. It is already being used effectively in an airport and parliament building in Australia, but the problem is getting someone to take the system on over here.

"People want to see it in operation but won't be the first to use it. It is an expensive system, but it can be linked to existing CCTV systems."

During the past year, the company, which was set up in 1992, has seen its workforce increase to 22, with a projected turnover of £3.5m this year compared with £3m last year.

Projects in the pipeline include the revamping of the CCTV control room at Northern Rock's head office in Gosforth, Newcastle, as well as a £40,000 contract to improve CCTV at an undisclosed NHS hospital in the North-East.