UK call centres grow despite offshore threat

The boom in offshore outsourcing to places such as India and eastern Europe has not resulted in the large-scale job losses in UK call centres that many predicted, according to a new report.

The UK Contact Centres in 2006: The State of the Industry report, by analyst ContactBabel, shows the UK call centre industry grew by 5.5 per cent in 2005.

Despite the fear that offshore outsourcing would lead to UK jobs disappearing, UK call centre employment actually increased by 52,000 workers last year and the industry remains on course to exceed one million jobs by the end of 2007.

The southeast of the country employs the greatest number of staff with almost 175,000 jobs in the sector but the industry is most important to the economy of the northeast, where almost five per cent of all jobs are in call centres.

Steve Morrell, principal analyst at ContactBabel, said in the report: "The contact centre industry is still a vital part of the economy in the north of the UK. There are still many very large operations, although there have been some high-profile casualties to the offshore phenomenon."

But he said the impact of offshore outsourcing on UK call centres has not been as bad as some people predicted.

Morrell said: "We are seeing a slowing of contact centre jobs offshore, and there are even some businesses which have announced that they are relocating their contact centres back to the UK. We expect the UK's contact centre industry to continue to grow steadily over the next five years."

Some expansion is predicted for the retail sector, which ContactBabel forecasts will overtake the financial services sector as the highest user of call centres, accounting for more than 700 of the UK's 5,200 call centres by 2008.

This expansion in the retail sector will be driven by the increase in telephone support required by internet shoppers. Just yesterday new figures revealed the level of online shopping has almost reached that of high-street department store shopping.