A MULTINATIONAL company that opened an office in Bradford in 2019 has seen huge growth since then - despite the complications from the Covid Pandemic.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers opened an office on Godwin Street in May 2019, with around 60 people based there at the time.

The company, which offers professional services, said at the time there was the potential to increase the number of staff to over 200 within a few years of opening.

Speaking to the Telegraph & Argus, Carl Sizer, head of regions, said the Bradford branch was soon to achieve that target - and has taken on a second floor in the building - part of the former TJ Hughes.

It means the business will soon around 225 people in Bradford - with many of these employees being Bradford residents.

He said the local growth in Bradford had been "pretty phenomenal."

He also spoke about the importance of office workers to cities like Bradford.

PWC was recently held up as an example of business success at a meeting of Bradford Council's Executive, with Chief Executive Kersten England saying it was the fastest growing branch of the company in the UK.

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The Bradford office opened as an Audit Centre of Excellence, which would deal with a big chunk of the company's audit work. New staff were taken on to deal with managed services offered by the company.

Mr Sizer said: "We started with 60, and we have around 176 now. We'll be further recruiting in the next six months to take on another 60 people.

"We said when we started we hoped to have 225 staff within a few years. We're going to hit that in about two and a half years - 18 months of which has been in a pandemic."

They said that the lockdown came when the Bradford office had not yet been open for a year..

Across the country around 3,000 of PWC's 22,000 staff have returned to the office, and the Bradford offices have re-opened for those who do want to return.

However, like many businesses, PWC has had to introduce social distancing, making out where people can sit on desks, and add limits to the numbers allowed in the office at any one time.

Mr Sizer said: "We kept a lot of our offices open for people's mental wellbeing. With some work you need a physical interaction. We're a big training organisation, we recruit 1,300 graduates a year. They all need training, and we continued to recruit through the pandemic."

Andy Ward, audit and transactions partner, said staff had seemed eager to return to the office - with the office recently reaching its social distancing capacity solely based on the staff wanting to come in that day.

He added: "People were saying about the benefits of being back in a physical work environment."

He said it was important that the pandemic didn't create a "lost generation" of workers who have only experienced working from home all their career.

Mr Sizer said: "Think about city centres - office workers are a critical part of busy city centres. Without them cafes ans some shops will struggle. A lot of businesses suffer the knock on consequences of not having office workers in the office."

Despite some experts questioning whether home working would now be the future, Mr Sizer said the aim was very much to keep staff in the Bradford office, saying: "In the pandemic we signed up for an extra floor here."

Asked how many of the staff are from Bradford, he said: "A very high proportion - that's our intention when we open somewhere, we want to recruit locally."

Mr Ward said: "We engage a lot with local schools. Having a business like this here creates aspiration for young people. It is a skilled job they can get that means they can stay local if they want to.

"It is about giving them a choice to stay local rather than none. They may decide to move to a job in Manchester or Leeds, but they're not going because there isn't a job here."

Suzanne Watson, chair of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, said: “While PwC are clearly a multi-national and very successful business, they are now also a successful Bradford business, adding to the increasing portfolio of flourishing firms in our district.

It’s great for the city that PwC can invest here, and grow, especially during such difficult times. Their success is the district’s success as more jobs are being created which can only be good news.

"PwC’s move to and success in Bradford has shown that the city can support and help grow our professional and financial services, and their confidence in our city will continue to contribute to the improvement and development of the local economy.”