Three hundred jobs are being created in south Wales with the opening of a customer call centre for Welsh utilities company Hyder.

Hyder Business Services, the managed services arm of the company, is planning to open a new commercial customer call and contact centre in south Wales.

The company has secured a lease on Tintern House at Llantarnam Park, near Cwmbran and plans to open the new 300-seat customer call and contact centre are now underway.

John Jasper, Managing Director of Hyder Business Services said: "We are developing a new generation customer contact centre in Cwmbran. Our operators will be in contact with our clients' customers over the telephone, by fax and pager and on-line through the internet."

The new centre will initially open in late spring with 50 operators, rising to 300 when fully up and running.

Councillor Brian Smith, Leader of Torfaen County Borough Council, commented: "I am delighted that Hyder Business Services has chosen a site in Cwmbran when they had the choice of so many other sites in south Wales. "

Dave Ludlow, Torfaen's Head of Economic Development, added: "It's great news for Torfaen, and our business development team will continue to work closely with the company to ensure its smooth start up."

Hyder and its subsidiaries Dwr Cymru Welsh Water and South Wales Electricity recently accepted price controls announced by Ofwat and Ofgem after being told to cut electricity and water bills.

Households across Wales should see cuts in their water bills averaging £38 a year.

While electricity bills in Wales are set to fall by an average of £15 a year.

Before Christmas Hyder announced that it was cutting 1,000 jobs over this year to reduce its workforce to 1,500.

Unions said they hoped around 650 job reductions would be made through voluntary redundancies.