A wave of 3,000 redundancies at Co-op stores through Britain will not affect Bradford, it has been revealed.

A radical shake-up within the Co-operative Retail Society has meant the closure of all ten Homeworld furniture stores and the 46 Living department stores - none of which are in Bradford.

And Bradford's Sunwin House, the head office for Yorkshire Co-operatives Limited, is unaffected.

The reason for the good news is that the Co-operative Retail Society and Yorkshire Co-operatives Ltd are completely unconnected companies.

Today Tony Henry, chief executive of Yorkshire Co-operatives, said: "I want to give an assurance to our customers that the job losses at CRS are nothing to do with us. It is business as usual for Yorkshire Co-operatives."

The national job losses came after the Rochdale-based Co-operative Retail Society decided to form a partnership with the Manchester-based Co-operative Wholesale Society.

Yorkshire Co-operatives' only link with the firms is that its food markets buy from the wholesale society.

The Sunbridge Road office said yesterday that the business, which includes 15 Sunwin House stores trading throughout Yorkshire and in Rochdale, Sale and Stockport, along with 102 food stores, garages, petrol stations and funeral firms, was an important element in the future over-all strategy.

Yorkshire Co-operatives achieved almost £70 million in sales last year thanks to its army of loyal customers who have more than 200,000 Sunwin account cards.

Mr Henry added: "Our department store group accounts for almost 20 per cent of our total business of almost £400 million and employs over 900 people.

"We also provide the only significant department store in many of the towns and cities in which we trade.

"1998 produced record sales and profits for the society and we are not about to do anything which would jeopardise our many successful years of profitable trading."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.