A seven-year-old girl from Riddlesden has been left with a heavy piggy bank after building societies in Keighley refused to accept all her carefully bagged up coppers.

Elizabeth Wilson, with the help of her grandparents, had saved up around £30 in copper and silver coins and had intended to pay them into one of her two building society accounts to save for a rainy day.

But Elizabeth's grandfather, Kenneth, of St Mary's Road, Riddlesden, says both the Skipton Building Society and the Nationwide refused to take his grand-daughter's money.

"I think it's ludicrous. It's not exactly as if banks and building societies have got a very good reputation at the moment," says Mr Wilson.

Elizabeth and her mother first tried at the Skipton Building Society and were told that the bags of coins must first be changed into notes at a bank before they could be paid into an account. A frustrated Elizabeth had a similar experience at the Nationwide Building Society, where a sign in the window says only five bags of coins may be paid in on any one day.

Elizabeth, a pupil at East Morton School, tried at the Halifax bank, but before she went to the branch, her grandfather phoned them to check their policy on coins. He was told that they too would only accept five bags.

Exasperated, Elizabeth and her grandfather went to the Halifax and were pleasantly surprised when they were allowed to pay in seven bags of coins.

Kenneth says: "What I find incredible is that they have all these rules and regulations that if you want to pay £25 in to the building society you have to make five trips on different days, never mind the extra expense incurred."

A spokesman from Keighley's Nationwide said the limit of five bags per day only applied to adult accounts.

She said: "We are only a small building society and we have to take all our coins to the bank ourselves, and so we have put down a limit of five bags per day. However, there is no limit on child account holders and they can pay in in different amounts too."

Spokesmen from both the Skipton Building Society and the Halifax bank say they have the same policy of a limit of five bags for adults and no limit for children.

The Halifax spokesman says: "We try to keep long queues to a minimum, and one of the ways we do this is to try and avoid lengthy transactions."