A leading national company has opened its first office in Cumbria, after winning a potentially multi-million pound contract.

Newcastle-headquartered Hatton Traffic Management has won the contract to provide the county council's traffic management framework in a deal worth up to £1.5m over the next four years.

Its local operation is based in Wigton and the company expects to create 15 jobs.

The firm, which was set up in 1976, specialises in providing temporary traffic management services and also has a division which focuses on large events.

Perhaps most notably, it has just celebrated 30 years of involvement with the Great North Run. This has seen it manage and service all aspects of traffic management at the event, the world's laergest half-marathon, since 1987.

The firm has six depots across the UK and provides services which are related to street works, motorway closures as well as traffic management for large events.

Tom Bailey, the firm's managing director, said “As a family-owned and family-run business, we pride ourselves on delivering a professional, reliable and cost-effective service for our clients – and it was this dedication to quality and cost-effectiveness that helped to secure our success with the Cumbria County Council framework.

"On the back of the win we are keen to continue to increase our presence in Cumbria. The opening of our new Wigton depot is a significant milestone towards achieving this and will help to further increase our capacity in the region, as well as generate local employment opportunities.”

All of the firm’s staff are employees of the company, which the firm has said is unusual in this sector. It follows this policy in a bid to maintain consistent quality and standards.

The new depot comes months after the company launched a number of new services, including permanent sign supply and installation, mobile elevated work platform services and vehicle restraint systems.

While this is a new depot, the company has also carried out some services in Cumbria in the past.

This has included work in the private sector, with several Sellafield supply chain partners.

These have inlcuded clients such as Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Lafarge Tarmac, Skanska, ITV and BBC.

Another project the company has undertaken in Cumbria saw the company employed to provide traffic management to enable the filming of a new film based on Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit novel.