Bradford Council has said it “expects” that a national company due to take over the running of the young person’s employment service Connexions will not make redundancies.

A fortnight ago it emerged the council had awarded the contract to provide 16-19-year-olds with career advice to national company Prospects, instead of Bradford and Keighley-based Aspire-i, which has been running the service for 14 years, employing over 140 people.

In its statement, the part-private, part-Bradford Council-owned Aspire-i said “a substantial number of redundancies were inevitable” in the cross-over but that appears to be disputed by Bradford Council and Prospects.

Bradford Council’s strategic director for services to children and young people, Kath Tunstall, said: “We expect all personal advisors and area managers currently involved in delivering the Connexions services in the district to continue to be employed and discussions about the transition will be held over the next few weeks.”

Aspire-i also runs other employment services, such as Access to Education — or A-2-E — courses, but its spokesman said that without the Connexions contract the company could “not rule out complete closure of the business”.

Ms Tunstall said: “Arrangements for the delivery of more specialist services will be announced shortly.

“It was decided in November 2007 that the Connexions contract would go out to tender and this has happened nationally and also in other parts of West Yorkshire. Prospects have been notified that they had submitted the best bid .”

Prospects’ executive chairman Ray Auvray said: “In these times of high youth unemployment, our young people have difficulties in making the transition from school or college into work and deserve the best possible support services.

“We have a number of exciting new ideas to improve services and we look forward to discussing these with the council, schools and colleges, the voluntary sector, employers and youth services, as well as with the young people themselves.

“We are planning to maintain continuity of service delivery by transferring existing staff into Prospects and through a detailed transition plan.”

Two weeks ago staff at Aspire-i were said to be “furious” about the contract decision, which was made even though the company had met all its targets.