The sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata could be officially anounced next week, reports suggest.

The Indian group will also keep jobs in the UK and commit to Jaguar-Land Rover's current business plan until 2011, it was claimed.

The sale is expected to be announced on March 5 or 6. It is believed the announcement is being delayed in order not to overshadow the introduction of an updated Ford Fiesta at the Geneva Auto Show next week

Roger Maddison, national officer of Unite, Britain's largest union in the automotive industry, told Automotive News Europe: "The sooner everything goes through, the better. The workforces are beginning to get anxious."

Tata has agreed to meet the guarantees sought by union leaders, Maddison said. A key issue was whether Tata would continue to source engines and other systems from Ford's British plants. Ford officials were not immediately available for comment.

Dave Osbourne, automotive industry national secretary for Unite, was quoted as saying that Tata had assured the union that all 15,300 jobs in the UK were safe.

He also claimed Tata had denied reports that it planned to sell Jaguar directly after the acquisition and that the group did not plan to transfer production to low cost countries.

Ford is breaking up its Premier Automotive Group (PAG) stable of luxury European brands, of which Jaguar and Land Rover are part, as part of a massive cost-cutting programme that has seen more than a dozen factories closed in North America and nearly 33,000 jobs axed.

Like its bigger Detroit rival General Motors, Ford has been hit by the double blow of soaring pension and healthcare costs and haemorrhaging sales as dollar-conscious Americans turned their backs on its big gas-guzzling vehicles in the teeth of soaring petrol prices.

In January PAG reported a full-year pre-tax profit of $504 million (£258 million) in 2007 compared with a loss of $344 million (£176 million) the previous year.