QVC went shopping and found the 38 acres it needed in Knowsley

What the occupiers say

Steve Joyce, UK operational resourcing manager at Vertex: "We are right in the middle of a big recruitment drive for Vertex in Knowsley, and have been working with JobCentre Plus and Knowsley Council to attract as many candidates as possible to ramp up capacity for a new contract that we are placing in the Knowsley contact centre.

"The contact centre we are looking for the roles is at our Pegasus site and we are looking to hire an additional 200 agents to work on our Tesco account. We already run a centre in Knowsley so have great links to the area. It's been an easy recruitment process so far because of the support we've had from the local council and JobCentre Plus, and the fact that Knowsley is such a large catchment area with lots of talented people looking for jobs.

"We've put up advertising on bus stops around the area, and so far we've had in excess of 500 applicants, which is a terrific result. Now I'm focusing on choosing the best candidates for the job and have already offered 90 positions over the last six weeks. I'm also looking at possibilities for apprentices and part-time agents to offer the best working options for all sectors of the community.

"The Pegasus contact centre has been running for some time now and should be up to the capacity we are aiming for shortly, and that is in no small part thanks to the speed and efficiency of our recruitment drive. As the account grows however we also have the potential for more hires, so we are further investing in the local area."

James Keegan, customer service general manager at shopping channel QVC: "The prime reason why we chose to be based in Knowsley 16 years ago was the availability of local workforce. We recruit 80% of staff from Kirkby and Huyton and always find good loyal staff nearby.

"We expanded six years ago and had to decide again whether to look at other areas but we chose to expand at Knowsley instead. We built a new high-bay warehouse and took on another 600 staff working with Knowsley Council on our plans all the way."

QVC employs 1,800 staff on Knowsley Industrial Park and has warehousing of 625,000 sq ft and 84,000 sq ft of offices spread across 38 acres. The new high-bay automated warehouse is operating at 50% capacity and Keegan cannot see a review of space in the medium term.

Keegan added: "The only thing that would make the location even better for us is on the transport side. We are a 24 hour, seven day business and the bus operators are fine during the day but do not run services out here at night. We pay shift premiums for night work and encourage people to use the car-sharing schemes and run discount schemes on bikes with Halfords. We would love public transport to be more flexible but then our operational needs here are never going to keep to a sustained timetable: we need 80 people in an hour then 200 in the next hour. Our busiest period is the midnight hour."