SIR – The fact careers officers serving the Bradford community have been denuded of their pensions by their former employer Bradford Council is bad enough, but the organisation selling their futures on is also misleading us.
As the chairman of Careers Bradford for more than 11 years and the chairman of the old schools sub-committee that oversaw the creation of the careers arrangements about to be sold off, I am in a position to correct the utterly misleading impression given by the Council PR unit that the Council has no stake in the organisation that has sold on.
Careers Bradford was set up jointly with the old Training and Enterprise Council, with each holding a 50 per cent stake. The TEC holding passed later to a trust.
It has delivered consistent reductions in young people without jobs or courses, even in the face of the recession. That the Council is ignorant of its own role is a shocking state of affairs.
What is yet to be clarified is who will pick up the liabilities for the pensions. It is entirely possible the hole in the pensions will fall back to the Council.
It’s hard to see the efficiency gains there.
Councillor Ralph Berry (Labour, Wibsey), Leyburn Grove, Shipley
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