OFFICIALS building one of the UK’s largest secure children’s homes in the North- East have insisted the £14m facility is not a soft option for young criminals.

Aycliffe Secure Centre will house some of the country’s most serious young offenders, alongside “innocent” youngsters who require extremely high levels of care.

Durham County Council opened the doors on the centre after leaked pictures of it were published in The Sun newspaper, which likened it to a fourstar hotel.

In August, 36 boys and girls will move into the facility, which has a swimming pool, gym, five-a-side pitch and a juice bar run by the children.

However, the council said similar facilities were already available at the existing, but run-down, Aycliffe Children’s Centre, where the children are currently accommodated.

In addition, officials said that by failing to bring the ageing secure home up to modern standards, it would have lost a lucrative Government contract – and with it 170 jobs.

Gill Palin, the county council’s strategic manager for secure services, said: “One of the key things that stops young people re-offending is access to education, training or employment, and that’s what we set out to deliver.

“We are not a soft touch, we are a secure facility – but one that gives young people the opportunity to develop skills and move on from the reasons that brought them here in the first place.”

Aycliffe Secure Centre has had several different names since the original facilities were built and faced allegations of brutality and a prison-style regime in the Eighties and Nineties.

However, its reputation has recovered in recent times and it is renowned as a centre of excellence for rehabilitation work, having produced two Oxford University students.

The new centre will eventually house 42 youngsters and comprises four standard house units, a high-dependency unit for drug detoxification and other severe problems and a step-down unit for leavers.

The high-security centre also includes educational and vocational facilities, visitor and meeting rooms, indoor and outdoor communal space, offices and training rooms.

Gail Hopper, head of safeguarding and specialist services at the county council, said there will be no games consoles in the sparse bedrooms where piped-in entertainment is a privilege which has to be earned.

Mrs Hopper said young people have a “full and purposeful day” that occupies them from 7am until about 9.15pm, when they are locked in their rooms – loss of liberty at the centre being the only punishment.

Mrs Hopper said: “We are not here to punish them, we are not here to deliver a service that is humiliating or damaging, we are here to deliver a facility that meets the national standards we have been set.”