YOUNG people will be the losers under a county council's plans to revise services amid further budget cuts, unions claim.

Durham County Council's Children and Young People's Services plans to axe 240 posts.

But under revised operation plans for young people's services, provided by the county council in conjunction with County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trust, more than 735 posts will be affected in total.

Newly introduced One Point teams will now perform much of the work, requiring a workforce of 683, which includes 188 newly created jobs.

This means a potential net loss of 52 county council posts, mostly in the Connexions advice and support service.

The authority is seeking to avoid compulsory redundancies by offering early retirement and voluntary redundancy and has pledged to seek alternative employment for those at risk of losing their job.

The council is consulting affected staff and trade unions over the proposed job cuts.

But there is growing concern among unions that support for young people in County Durham will diminish at a time when youth unemployment is at record levels.

Unison Durham branch secretary Neville Hancock, said: "We think services for young people will deteriorate.

"There have been national Government cuts to Connexions, but it is a local authority's statutory duty to deliver these services.

"This is one of many cases, due to the council having to make £120m worth of cuts, where people may potentially lose their jobs.

"Whether they're voluntary or compulsory redundancies, people are still going to lose their jobs."

Trevor Blacklock, National Union of Teachers' divisional secretary for Durham, said: "What's not taken into account is that these services are highly experienced back-ups for young people which are being torn back with the authority's new restructure.

"Schools are going to have to seriously re-evaluate how they deal with children and find other ways.

"The authorities call it reorganisation. It's a similar service with fewer staff and reduced provisions."

Carole Payne, head of early intervention and partnerships at Durham County Council, said the new One Point teams will offer easier and earlier access to a range of services.

"These include health visiting, educational welfare, family and parenting support, behaviour support, youth work and personal careers guidance and support," she said.

Dave Ford, the council's head of achievement services, added: "The operational aspects of the service with young people and their families, currently provided by Connexions, will be taken on by our new integrated locality teams, which will also come into being on September 1, when Connexions ceases to exist."

He said planning for these changes has taken place for some time and although there will be "capacity" reductions the council's strategy will still be introduced, "as planned."