YORK'S telephone call centre is to close within the next two years, BT announced today.

BT Retail employs 242 staff and also has 20 agency staff at its Stonebow call centre in York, which deals with customer inquiries about sales and billing.

But BT said today there would be no compulsory redundancies and other jobs would be found for those who wanted them.

The announcement comes in the same month as the closure of the 192 answering service, also in Stonebow. The 192 service staff transferred to the call centre.

The call centre closure is to take place in the next two years and a BT spokesman said staff would be given six months' notice of the date.

He said: "There will be opportunities for people to travel to Leeds to work and we are also looking at other roles outside the call centre environment. We have a lot of field operations systems based in York and many operations in Leeds."

BT Retail has five customer call centres at the moment and the York closure is part of a plan to expand two of them, at Doncaster and Sheffield, with £11.9 million investment.

A second Sheffield centre is also to close in the next two years and the fifth site, at Grimsby will stay open for two years, but will close within four.

The Yorkshire reorganisation is in turn part of a national overhaul of the call centre system.

Patricia Vaz, BT Retail's managing director of customer service, said: "We do not underestimate the impact of this transformation project and virtually everyone in our existing call centre operation will be affected in one way or another.

"However, we are totally committed to manage these changes sensitively and professionally, and in line with specific principles agreed with the unions.

"We value our people very highly and will be giving them all the support we can. We are committed to finding suitable alternative roles for everyone who wants to remain in BT."

Updated: 15:06 Wednesday, March 27, 2002