MOVING 2,000 tax office jobs out of Bradford will create a “black hole” of local knowledge, according to a worker’s union.

On Wednesday the Government announced it would be closing two tax offices in Bradford and one in Shipley, transferring the staff to a regional hub in Leeds.

The move has been met with condemnation from all parties in Bradford, and the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents many of the staff that will be effected said it would have a “detrimental impact on local communities.”

The move, part of a larger shake up that will see HMRC offices through the country closed, will see 6,000 civil servants working in Wellington Place in Leeds city centre by 2020.

HMRC offices in Centenary Court and the Interchange in Bradford and the Shipley Accounts office are all now due to shut between 2019 and 2021.

Shipley MP Philip Davies said the decision would prove to be a “shocking waste of taxpayer money” and that he was “extremely disappointed" in the decision.

Naz Shah, Bradford West MP, said she had been in touch with Mr Davies and were hoping to have a meeting with HMRC to possibly reverse their decision. And Bradford East MP Imran Hussain said the move would “ rip hundreds of high-skill, high-wage jobs out of the city.”

A PCS Union spokesman said: “We are opposed to the department’s plans to close offices in 90 per cent of its locations, and to replace these offices with just 13 regional centres and a handful of support sites – a plan they call ‘Building Our Future’.

"Our members have repeatedly made clear that the department’s plans will result in a loss of essential expertise and will create ‘compliance black holes’ up and down the country, where there is no local knowledge within HMRC to ensure that everyone is paying the right amount of tax. The plans will have a major detrimental impact on local communities up and down the country, as tens of thousands of jobs are moved away from those communities and into a small number of big cities.”

He also said the plans were "thinly veiled" cover for job cuts - with the new centre in Leeds employing fewer staff than the current amount in Yorkshire and the Humber.