WORK started on an £8 million Bradford care complex which is expected to generate around 140 jobs and provide accommodation for more than 90 residents.

The Gateway care village at Dudley Hill will cater for people with a range of needs and aim to become a centre of excellence for dementia care and residential care for older people with additional needs.

The project, which is due for completion next year, is being funded by the Leeds city region Local Enterprise Partnership Business Growth Programme and Yorkshire Bank.

Jill Kemp, part of the Gateway senior management team, said the start of the Gateway scheme followed five years of planning and marked the beginning of a new chapter in Bradford’s care provision She said: “It marks an exciting stage in a long-term plan to create a care environment which offers exemplary specialist dementia care for older people in Bradford.”

THE Bradford-based Business Enterprise Fund, a social enterprise offering a financial lifeline to businesses across West and North Yorkshire, opened its third office and has hired five more staff.

BEF, based in Little Germany, achieved 100 per cent growth over the past 12 months by issuing £4 million of loans to businesses spurned by the banks. In the past decade it has supported around 1,500 businesses which created around 1,000 jobs. Stephen Waud, fund director, said: “Without BEF some of the businesses we have supported would never have got off the ground, may have stood still at best or could have faced folding completely, hurting the already fragile economy in the region.”

FAMILY-RUN supermarket Booths, which has an Ilkley store, launched a scheme guaranteeing to pay farmers the highest supermarket price of 35.5p a litre for their milk through its Fair Milk product designed to help under-pressure dairy farmers.

Booths will review the market price regularly, to ensure it is paying farmers more than their supermarket rivals.

Chairman Edwin Booth said: “As dairy farmers are under pressure, we guarantee to pay our farmers the highest market price for every pint of milk we sell.

“It means family farms are able to keep going, invest in the future and spend more time and money looking after their herds to ensure they produce great quality milk.” Among farms to benefit is Wigglesworth Hall Farm in Wigglesworth, near Skipton.

Farmer Edward Booth (no relation to the supermarket chief) said: “This is an exciting opportunity.

“It gives us the confidence to continue moving forward with our business and to make investments and improvements on the farm.”