THE drive to ask the public about a major plan to merge Dorset councils has begun with a £10,000 blunder.

Leaflets and documents were printed with a web address that the councils did not own and which has since been bought by someone else.

The episode has been branded “desperately unprofessional” by one councillor.

Dorset’s nine major local authorities are considering merging into just two all-purpose councils. That would mean Bournemouth and Poole combining, while Christchurch and East Dorset could either join them or become part of a separate authority for the rest of the county.

A postal survey is going to only 20,000 homes, with other residents invited to take part online or at roadshows.

But the chosen address, reshaping-your-councils.uk, has had to be changed to reshapingyourcouncils.uk, without the hyphens.

A statement from Tony Williams, chief executive at Bournemouth Borough Council, said: “On Friday we discovered that the domain name for the Reshaping Your Councils’ website that had been publicised on all media and consultation documentation was not in our ownership.

“We immediately made every effort to obtain that domain name but discovered that since we had started our planning, it had been bought by an unknown third party. To rectify the position we are using a similar domain name – reshapingyourcouncils.uk – and the team worked tirelessly over the weekend to publicise this site, to ensure that the consultation could begin as planned on Tuesday August 30, at an additional cost of £9,600.

“This work included reprinting the original run of consultation documents and questionnaires, plus some promotional posters and postcards.”

Poole Liberal Democrat councillor David Brown said: “It’s somewhat ironic that starting a programme which supposedly saves us money results in a £10,000 wastage by making a mistake.

“I fear different organisations trying to work across each other will have the same result.”

Fellow Lib Dem Cllr Phil Eades added: “It’s desperately unprofessional. It calls into question how they’re going to conduct the rest of the consultation. It may well be a relatively small sum of money but it’s public money and it’s hardly a very good way to kick off a consultation.

“It can hardly fill local residents with confidence.”

The councils say many services would have to be cut if there was no change to the county’s local government.

They say the “most financially beneficial” option would be a merger of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch with a rural unitary consisting of Dorset County Council and the other district councils.