The company once charged with running the city's festival today said it was not withholding evidence about £200,000 that Bradford Council claims is unaccounted for.

The Council this week terminated a contract with the Bradford International Festival Company claiming it had received no documents detailing its spending.

The authority claims £200,000 it paid the company to set up this year's festival was still unaccounted for.

However the director of the company - which has run the summer festival for the past two years - Neil Butler said he had supplied the evidence, but that Bradford Council had lost it.

Mr Butler said: "There have been real communication problems within the Council.

"I have been dealing with accountants, lawyers and people on the ground and there have been at least two instances where I have received quite rude letters saying we have not delivered information which I know we have delivered. And when I have spoken to them, they have apologised."

He added: "The Council also knows we have evidence that we have returned considerably more in terms of work done, grants raised and commercial funds raised, than the amount advanced to us.

"It is now a legal issue. We do not feel the Council has the right to terminate the contract.

"They are using bully-boy tactics to intimidate a very small company and they are doing this to cover up their mismanagement."

As previously reported the three-year contract between the company and Bradford Council ended 12 months early, meaning the Council will have to take over the organisation of June's event. However Jane Glaister, Bradford's director of arts, heritage and leisure, denied that the authority had lost the evidence it wants.

She said: "Neither myself nor anyone else has received the documentary evidence that we have asked for. Across the Council, officers are aware we have been waiting for this evidence. We have also been to the former festival offices but it has not been received there either."

As for claims that the Council had received more money than it invested in the festival, she said: "It was part of the original contract that the potential tender for the festival would bring in additional money."

Mr Butler said despite the latest developments the company was still working towards a hand-over of this year's event: "We will continue to work with those Council officers who want to - there are some very good officers in Bradford who want a good festival."