BURY-based Pennine Telecom is helping a large retail operation keep their communications in order.

The Mall Corporation specialises in taking over shopping malls, refurbishing them and giving them a new lease of life and now owns 12 around the country.

Pennine, whose headquarters are in Salford Street, Bury, have re-equipped three of the malls, in Aberdeen, Epsom and Edgware with new radio systems and they have dramatically improved efficiency.

Alan Day, general manager of Aberdeen's Trinity Shopping Centre, says: "The new radios and base station supplied by Pennine Telecom have given us very good quality sound and clear messages are getting through at all levels of the shopping centre."

His colleague David Beddows, the operations manager at the Ashley Shopping Centre in Epsom, agrees.

"The radio performance has improved greatly," he says. "The new system from Pennine Telecom is working well. Reception is good in all areas in and around the building with improved signal strength and clarity.

"The panic button system works well and is a valuable additional feature as well as the ability to activate and deactivate radios should they go missing."

In addition to supplying equipment, Pennine also manages contracts by looking after the maintenance, repairs and even supplying replacement batteries.

Colin Caulfield, Mall Corporation's national facilities manager, says his intention is to roll out these managed contracts to as many of the company's sites as possible.

"Good communications are fundamental in both safety and security for all our premises, staff and retailers and, most importantly, our customers. We are very, very pleased with the Pennine programme. Where before we had little or no communications or degraded or poor reception it is now crystal clear," he said.