One North East’s pilot project – the Home Working Fund – is creating 140 new jobs with a call centre trialling home working for the first time.

The project aims to create 360 jobs in two years and has now produced 260 jobs in the region, since March.

Homesource UK, 2Touch, and Agile UK are the latest participants in the £1.1m scheme, managed by Entrust, which is aimed at helping companies establish home workers in the North East.

2Touch is testing home workers for the first time. Its head of recruitment, Tracy Taylor, said: “We have known for a while that we wanted to investigate how home working could fit within our overall business model. We wanted to identify certain roles that could be home based, thereby utilising an additional skilled workforce."