The Garlands call centre operation has gone into administration, leaving over a thousand employees in the North East of England facing redundancy. The move appears to have been causes by a number of clients moving their customer service business away from CJ Garland & Co. The company, which had been trading for over 25 years, was founded by Chey Garland. It had provided customer service operations to Vodafone, Orange and TalkTalk.
Nick Reed, director and joint administrator at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said "Garlands Call Centres has experienced very challenging trading conditions and more recently received notice from a number of key clients of their intention to move their customer service work. The Garlands’ board were unable to identify a viable way forward given the significant deterioration in contract work and high infrastructure costs. As such, they were left with no option than to appoint administrators. My team and I will focus on working with employees, clients and suppliers to facilitate a smooth and effective wind-down or transfer of operations over the next few weeks".