A BRIGHOUSE firm has invested a six figure sum to open a new town centre office - and plans to create up to 80 new jobs over the next three years.

Yorkshire Payments, whose clients include Bradford City Football Club, The Piece Hall and John Smith's Stadium, has moved to the Grade II-listed former Bethel Chapel building on Bethel Street, parallel to the town's main high street.

James Howard, founder and managing director, said: “As a business, we are fiercely proud to be based in Brighouse and we want to buck the trend by moving back to the high street, rather than away from it.

"Our whole way of doing business is centred around supporting independent, local and regional companies, and we’d be contradicting that if we tucked ourselves away at on out-of-town business park.

“As part of our move back to the town centre to increase our office space from 900 square foot to almost 6,000 square foot, we hope to help attract new customers and clients to the shops and businesses in Brighouse.

“We have hundreds of meetings each month with individuals and companies from all over Yorkshire, and we hope the retailers that surround us in the town centre will be able to capitalise on this additional footfall to the high street."

Mr Howard said the business also plans to create further jobs as part of the move.

“We are looking to recruit for between sixty to eighty new staff over the next 36 months as part of the growth of Yorkshire Payments, all of whom will be based out of the new head office, and we’d love to hear from people who think they might like to join us across a variety of roles," he said.

“We have invested heavily in refurbishing the space to create a state-of-the-art environment for colleagues and clients alike.

“Team members will be able to make use of a relaxation area including games consoles and a brand-new canteen, and we are even planning on installing a fully functioning bar that will double as our boardroom and allow us to demonstrate our card payment solutions in a real-life payment scenario.

“Our new head office will also be a paper-lite environment fitted with state-of-the-art LED lighting to help minimise our carbon footprint.”

The move comes as part of a strategic plan to accommodate further growth for the business, which processed a record half-a-billion pounds in card transactions through its systems in the last 12 months.

The company now has more than 3,500 clients across Yorkshire including some of the region’s best-known sports venues and tourist attractions such as The John Smith’s Stadium, Bradford City Football Club, Cannon Hall Farm and The Piece Hall.

It also works with Harrogate Spring Water, travel brand icelolly.com, global workwear manufacturer, Snickers Workwear and household white goods manufacturer, White Knight.