STRIKE action that could cripple public services across the region may be called off today following a late Government peace offering to unions.

Leaders of more than 1.5 million council workers and civil servants are meeting to decide whether to cancel Wednesday's planned industrial action.

The country's biggest trade unions, including Unison, the Transport and General Workers' Union, Amicus, the GMB and the Public and Commercial Services union, are expected to agree to call off the 24-hour strike, which threatened widespread disruption to council and government services across the country.

The deadlocked dispute was broken on Friday, when the Government offered an olive branch in the form of a "fresh start", to reconsider its controversial plans to extend the pension age for public sector workers from 60 to 65.

Works and Pensions Secretary Alan Johnson conceded there had been "misunderstanding and suspic- ion" over the reforms and said the Government wanted to resolve the issue properly rather than get the policy wrong.

The offer of fresh talks was warmly welcomed by the union leaders, who are expected to recommend to their respective executives today that the strike should be called off.

However, some union activists are understood to remain unhappy at what they regard as a move to avoid embarrassing Labour by having a major strike in the run up to a General Election.

Schools, libraries, Jobcentres, leisure centres and council offices faced closure on Wednesday if the strike had gone ahead.

It would have meant a down tools by everyone from refuse collectors to school caretakers, social workers and driving test examiners, with commuters facing deadlock on the A19 with the closure of the Tyne Tunnel.

Local government union Unison estimated 90,000 North-East workers would have joined the strike.

Pickets were planned outside council offices and demonstrations were to be held in Newcastle, Sunderland and Darlington.

Unison regional secretary Gill Hale said members were "very, very angry" at the proposed pension changes.

"You make plans for your retirement a long time ahead, and if these changes were to have been introduced it would have proved very destabilising," she said.

"It left people being faced with the prospect of having to work a lot longer than they envisaged and for some people that would have been very difficult."

Like her counterparts in other public services unions, she was hoping the late compromise offer would prove acceptable.