A UNION is taking legal action against a company which manages a council's leisure centres and swimming pools.

Public service union, Unison, claims Tees Valley Leisure, which looks after leisure complexes in the Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council area, is refusing to pay its workers a nationally-agreed 3.5 per cent pay award.

Mike Hill, the union's regional officer says the company has told him it does not have enough money to honour the increase, which he says is not good enough.

"The fact that the trust claims to be in financial difficulties after just under three years of operating, is staggering, and buries the myth that privatisation creates efficiency.

"Forcing the workforce to take a pay cut to bail the company out is totally wrong and has to be resisted," he said yesterday.

Tees Valley Leisure spokesman Glyn Amos said the board had merely decided to defer consideration of the award until its next meeting on September 6.

He said: "The board decided to defer the award until September until we were able to consider how the company was performing.

"That does not mean at all that Tees Valley Leisure Limited won't pay.

"We are managed by the board which is a workers' cooperative board.

"The majority of the members of the board are employees."