BT has announced a three-year extension to an existing contract between its Global Services arm and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The contract extension, worth a minimum of £237m, was described as follows in a statement from BT: "We will continue to provide converged IP local and wide-area networks, IP telephony and a range of conferencing services including videoconferencing to a broad range of government public sector units."

The units will include Jobcentre Plus, the Pensions, Disability and Carers Service, Northern Ireland Social Security Agency and the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.

The DWP's IP network and telephony systems regularly handle more than two million calls a day and sometimes three million at peak times, according to BT.

BT added that it had already rolled out nearly 22,000 seats for the DWP's virtual contact centre, which can see 400,000 calls a day answered at peak times. "This year we'll see that number of contact centre seats move close to 30,000," said BT.

Permanent secretary for the DWP Sir Leigh Lewis said: “the extension of our contract with BT will ensure that we are able to further improve our service to our customers as well as reduce costs."