Twenty-five jobs will be created when a new direct-marketing operation opens in Bradford for a firm which is expanding in the north.

Colleagues Direct Marketing, based in Bath, is creating the jobs at its new regional office on the Woodland Park estate near Oakenshaw, off the M62.

The Colleagues North office, next to Cleckheaton Golf Course, is near completion and an opening ceremony is planned for June 11.

The firm is moving into one of three office blocks on the estate, which is still being built.

The firm already has offices at the Pitcliffe Way Industrial Estate off Manchester Road in Bradford, where it employs 25 staff and plans to recruit 25 more by the end of the year. The firm also has offices in Liverpool, where it currently employs 10 staff and has 100 workers at its headquarters in Bath.

Peter Henry, sales director of Colleagues, said today: "This investment demonstrates our commitment to existing and new clients in the north. We find that direct marketing clients like agencies near where they are based. When the new offices open we will close the current office and transfer the staff, many of them from Bradford, there."

He said Colleagues Direct Marketing had chosen Bradford as its Yorkshire base because its founder bosses, Andrew Bennett and James Robson, were both from the city.

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