A union representing thousands of council workers is threatening to take Bradford Council to the High Court in a dispute over pay and conditions.

Public services union Unison says the Council wants to "welch" on existing agreements which protect staff from redundancy and is refusing to accept the union's proposals for long term redeployment and training.

The Council has turned down the union's demands because it says they are illegal and gave Unison and other unions until Wednesday to accept its own terms.

But today Unison's regional secretary, Cliff Williams, said barrister Brian Langstaff, an expert on employment law, believed the union's proposals were not illegal.

Now Unison says it is challenging the Council to go to the High Court for a ruling on whether the current agreements with its employees - or the new ones proposed by the union - are unlawful.

Mr Williams said: "We have shown the Council our legal advice from one of the most eminent QCs in the country but they have refused us access to their own legal advice.

"This tends to confirm our members' views that the Council's legal arguments are just a smoke screen to allow the private sector to make our members suffer to guarantee their profits.

"Bradford Council claims its proposals for redeployment and training are an improvement. We know that an overwhelming majority of staff will suffer. That will be bad for our members, the standard of public services and for the struggling economy."

But Councillor Richard Wightman, Bradford Council's executive committee member for corporate affairs, said: "The Council believes its legal advice is correct and the union's is flawed.

"We are checking over the weekend but believe counsel's opinion to Unison is incorrect and unsatisfactory. But we want to be absolutely satisfied that the Council is right."