The Yorkshire Building Society has opened its new £10 million call centre in Bradford city centre - and pledged to create up to 400 jobs.

The hi-tech building in Filey Street has already become the home to 200 staff who were moving into their new offices this week.

And, with its members increasingly using the internet and e-mail to manage their finances, it is planned to expand the centre by an additional 20 people every month until it reaches its 400 capacity.

The new centre is already the Yorkshire's second in Bradford as it has a similar facility at its headquarters in Rooley Lane.

And the company is keen to stress it has invested heavily in the new centre to provide the highest quality facilities for its staff - even including an internet caf.

Sally Whiteley, contact centre operations manager, said: "It is an important step for the Yorkshire to have two member contact centres on different sites.

"The two centres will work as one team and all calls and inquiries to the society can be answered or dealt with at either site. The biggest benefit of this structure is that each site will use different telephone exchanges, so our members will be able to contact us even if there is a problem at one of the exchanges."

She said the new centre would be monitored to see if it was coping with demand and, if customers were having to wait too long, then resources would be increased.

She added: "We are really fortunate that the new centre has three purpose-built training suites which are some of the most up-to-date in the region."