Chey Garland awarded CBE

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Chey Garland

Chey Garland, Founder and Chief Executive Garlands Call Centres has been awarded a CBE.

Chey Garland (50), Founder and Chief Executive of Garlands Call Centres, has been awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2007. Ms Garland was given the award for services to Business in the North East.

Commenting on the award of the CBE, Chey said “I’m absolutely thrilled.

I’ve derived enormous pleasure from what we have achieved at Garlands Call Centres, and owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the fabulous people that have helped me build the company to where it is today.”



Chey Garland leads an award-winning outsourced customer contact business with sales of 43.5 million in the year to 31/10/06.


Based 100% in the Tees Valley, Garlands has established a strong reputation within the UK contact centre industry for its approach to delivering quality service – an approach driven by Chey’s belief in four basic rules: stimulate, respect and develop your people support them with the best technology create environments that are motivational and encourage teamworking aim to consistently exceed customers’ expectations

Garlands’ services range from customer retention to cross selling, customer service, customer acquisition, back office, credit management and customer lifecycle management; and its clients include Vodafone, Virgin Media, easyJet and Talk Talk.

Chey’s story is a remarkable one. In 1980, she used 600 of personal savings and established CJ Garland & Co, a commercial credit collections agency that grew quickly to employ sixty people. In 1997, the company won a 20 seat, 12 week contract to handle overflow customer service calls for a major UK business – and Garlands Call Centres was born.

In 1999, the company moved into purpose-built premises on Hartlepool Marina. In 2003, business expansion led to new premises in the centre of Middlesbrough; followed in 2005 by the creation of a Contact Centre Village in Stockton.


The company today employs around 3100 full and part time people, making it the second largest private employer in the Tees Valley region. Garlands clients include Vodafone, Virgin Media, easyJet and Talk Talk.


Garlands Call Centres has won many awards for the quality of its work – including North East Contact Centre of the Year 2005 and, together with Vodafone, “Best Work by a Contact Centre” at the 2006 Marketing Direct SMART awards.

Chey herself was recognised as ‘Business Services Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the 2002 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finals, ‘Best Business Leader’ in the 100+ employee category at the Sage Business Awards 2002 and Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year for 2005.

Married with twin boys, aged 13, Chey’s hobbies include mentoring children and restoring the classical gardens that border her home, an eighteenth century manor house, in a village on the North York borders with Teesside. She is happy with what’s been achieved but believes a good entrepreneur should always be looking for the next challenge.

And Chey is a person who relishes a challenge.  From the day she raided her savings account to start her own business at the age of 23, Chey has never followed anyone else’s template for success. The company has her name on it; and now, as always, it reflects her philosophy and personality.

About Garlands Call Centres

Garlands Call Centres handles inbound and outbound customer contacts via phone, email and the Web. Its services include customer retention, cross selling, upselling, customer service, customer acquisition, credit management, customer lifecycle management and back office functions.

Author: Jonty Pearce

Published On: 21st Jun 2007 - Last modified: 14th Feb 2012
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7 Comments
  • Rumour has it that Garlands have as of today – 17/05/2010 have ceased trading.

    Jeronimo 17 May at 16:31
  • Such a shame. The Government should prioritise retaining call centres and the customer service industry instead of allowing it to go to cheap labour in the 3rd world.

    I would suggest an Export Service Tax to discourage businesses exporting our jobs.

    Condolences to all those who have lost their jobs and hope new jobs are created soon.

    Malc London 17 May at 16:42
  • I was a manager at Garlands on the TalkTalk contract.
    I feel very sorry for my colleagues who today have found out that they are now out of work, some found out after seeing the news, like myself.

    However I am not surprised at this news, the company did not care about their employees, many of the managers were phone advisers temporarily promoted to Team Manager but without any pay increase and more shockingly, no training was supplied to the managers. The advisors would try and take leave, but this would be rejected as there was no leave availability, as a result the attrition was high and sick and absenteeism unbelievable. Garlands also traded very close to the law, for example they breached health and safety policy on a number of occasions, I was only there for 2 months, but for me that was 2 months too long.

    Mr Smith 17 May at 21:31
  • Sadly it is true. The company has gone into administration and it does not look very promising that much will be saved.

    We will be running a story this week in Call Centre Helper.

    jonty pearce 18 May at 18:05
  • I was an employee of Chey Garland’s for seven very happy years from Feb.’99 to Mar.’2006 and am absolutely devastated by the announcement she had to make yesterday, it is so unfair.

    I would like to briefly give you my background with the company and a very recent (last few days) incident that epitomises the travesty of Chey’s situation and all her employees.

    I was one of the first 25 people to work at the then new Call Centre at Garland House on the Marina as an agent on the Vodafone contract. I progressed quickly and Chey made me her Facilities Co-ordinator from March 2002 where I saw the development from two call Centres on the Marina to being involved during the construction of the third one Tranquillity House in 2003/4 plus Preston Farm, Stockton two call Centre buildings and the Conference Centre as well as the growth at Centre North East, Middlesbrough from her taking initially two floors to ultimately ten and a half floors by 2004/5.

    I just would like to mention a personal experience that happened to me last week that I think is most relevant to the situation she has been unwillingly placed by her main contracts such as Vodafone taking their business abroad to such as India.

    Three weeks ago I discovered through a meeting I had with one of the maintenance personnel who still works at Garlands (sorry that is now possibly did), who I employed for her in March 2002 that she had lost the majority of the Vodafone contract work that had been the mainstay of her business, growing year on year from about 1998 and all she was left with now at Hartlepool was Talk, Talk.

    This information proved most useful to me as last week I discovered that I had lost my ex-directory status on my home landline phone and deduced that this had probably happened when I switched from BT to Talk, Talk at the start of this year. I naturally contacted Talk, Talk and unfortunately for me as it turned out I was answered by an Asian lady, whose name was unpronounceable and was in India. I tried to explain my problem to her but she could not understand me at all what I was talking about. I asked her if she could switch me to someone in Britain who would understand what I meant by ex-Directory but she said she was unable to. In the end she said she would get me an engineer but I said it was not an engineer that I needed but someone in their Administration Department. The call finished after about ten minutes of discussion and I knew I was no further forward in resolving my problem.

    It was then that I realised I could possibly get someone at Garlands to contact me so last Thursday I e-mailed Marilyn,(Receptionist Garland House) who Chey referred to in her interview on ITV North-East last night if she could get someone in the Call Centre to contact me at work on Friday morning, having given her my Home Tel No. and Talk, Talk account number to enable them to identify me and look at my account.

    A young man called Graham Douglas duly contacted me on Friday morning and within five minutes had grasped my problem, identified the cause and told me that by Monday (i.e. yesterday) he would have resolved it and would ring me to confirm. I thanked him for his help but naturally poor lad was unable to call me yesterday which I fully appreciate and understand.

    My problem pales into insignificance when compared to the likes of Graham and all the rest of the staff in the Call Centre buildings plus the support staff for the company. It is nothing short of a tragedy and all because the greed of the big companies in this country by paying cheap labour costs in India, etc and what do we the British public get a cheap & cheerful second class, no third class service in many cases – it is a travesty.

    Alan C Craddock 19 May at 15:13
  • have known Chey since her £600 days and before – absolute tragedy for someone who has put so much effort and expertise into her company, only to see 30 years of total commitment vanish overseas. Quality it seems is a “dirty word” these days.

    Dave Hall 20 May at 16:27
  • I have known Chey since the Albert Road days (1987) and was greatly saddened to hear of her business difficulties. We were a very small staff, we worked hard but had lots of fun in the process. We are all aware of the greed of big companies exporting business to cheap labour India, and well aware that they are not competent in what they do. I must express my sympathy for all of Chey’s staff, and naturally Chey herself. She will be broken hearted, but I am sure that she will bounce back.

    Pat Amer 6 Jun at 16:51