Final figures reveal only 16,000 people responded to the county's super council consultation.

Dorset's nine local authorities, which are proposing to merge into just two unitary authorities, sent questionnaires to 20,000 addresses across the county and received just 4,258 responses.

An open consultation questionnaire received 12,536 responses.

Poole provided the biggest overall response to the consultation, with 781 replies to the household survey and 2,625 to the open survey. Bournemouth was close behind with 670 and 2,048 responses respectively.

Smaller towns and areas provided similar levels of feedback to each other.

East Dorset saw 554 household and 1,433 open responses, West Dorset 508 and 1,414 and Christchurch 459 and 1,409.

Purbeck provided 453 and 656, North Dorset 439 and 632 and Weymouth and Portland 391 and 694.

The councils say it is "impractical" to obtain the views of all residents, and that it is possible to be "95 per cent confident" that views from a random sample of 384 residents will reflect those of the entire population with little margin for error.

They expect the survey to clearly reveal the preferences of residents in particular areas.

The analysis by ORS will be available online on December 5, along with the 'case for change' being prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Plans for Conservative councillors at Christchurch to 'reach a mandate' over local council reorganisation has been slammed as 'undemocratic'.

A special meeting of the Conservative group will be held on December 10, days before a key meeting on December 15 with all the leaders and chief executives of Dorset councils to discuss the way forward.

In an email to Conservative councillors, leader of the council, Ray Nottage, said "a mandate should be reached by group consensus and include the views of those who are unable to attend the meeting."

However, a full council meeting with all councillors is due to take place on December 13 at Christchurch with the issue of reorganisation likely to be the lead topic for discussion on how the leader should proceed.

Opposition leader, Cllr Colin Bungey, said: "This is a full council decision and by doing this, they are in fact disenfranchising three councillors and several thousand people in Christchurch who are not going to be represented.

"This is a decision that should be debated and taken at full council, not decided, like so many things, behind closed doors where a controlling group can influence the decision.

"This is not what is best for the people of Christchurch."

Leader, Cllr Ray Nottage, said: "When Conservative group members meet on December 10 we will be discussing the case for change reports which will be circulated and made public on 5 December.

"Until we have seen these we cannot say how discussions at our group meeting will go as we do not know what the content of the report will be."

The Daily Echo also asked if there would be a whip on Tory members at the full council meeting, but this was not answered.