From Telecentre to WEB Centre

The Telecentre began in January 1996 as a Nottinghamshire County Council pilot project; 'to test the concept of remote working and to offer employment and training opportunities to the north of the County where, due to mining closures, unemployment was high.' It was intended to provide clerical and admin support to County Council departments, using advanced ICT.

Warsop Town Hall was chosen as a site for the Telework project, particularly as staff could be recruited from an existing IT training group. A room was equipped with state of the art computers, including video conferencing and work stations linked to the County Council's Mainframe system and the Internet.

The newly recruited staff embarked on an intensive training scheme with West Notts College and the County Council's Denewood Centre and each gained a Telework Association VQ, RSA III and NEBS management qualification. During early 1996 they undertook a series of training sessions in HTML and designed Nottinghamshire County Council's first website. Development of internet skills continued and the Telecentre became recognised as the Authority's Web Development Centre.

April 2004 saw a major re-organisation of the Telecentre, with three members of the team making up the newly formed Corporate Web Content Management Team, following their success in developing the new website. The centre's name was also changed to Warsop Electronic Business Centre (WEB Centre) as 'Telecentre' was often mis-interpreted to mean telesales and didn't reflect the true nature of the business. Services were extended beyond the County Council and are now available to other organisations.

The objectives, however, remain the same and the WEB Centre aims to increase its workload to provide employment opportunities for local people in the near future. It is self financing and operates on a not-for-profit basis, enabling services to be offered at very competitive prices.

We Make The National Headlines Once Again
Warsop Electronic Business Centre, formerly Telecentre is back in the national news again following it's success in 2003 in gaining the e.wellbeing award...

[more info]