CHRISTCHURCH council bosses have come under fire for failing to attend a heated meeting about the future of the authority.

Members of the Christchurch Citizens’ Association invited residents and councillors alike to debate the proposed reshaping of councils across Dorset.

Chairman Sue Bungey said residents faced “the biggest changes to [the] borough in over 1,000 years” and that Christchurch would be affected more than any other area.

She told Saturday’s meeting invitations had been extended to council leader cllr Ray Nottage, deputy Cllr Claire Bath and chief executive David McIntosh.

She said their absences were “genuinely disappointing”.

One resident said: “What I’m really sad about is that Ray Nottage and Claire Bath aren’t here.

“If it were my consultation I would be sitting up there to defend it to the death.

Addressing other councillors in the room he said: “Take the message back to your boss: we don’t like him and we don’t want him.”

Resident Andrew Ellis said: “From everything I have heard it seems an absolute no brainer that Christchurch should stay independent.”

Another resident told the meeting: “It appears to me that we’re not being run democratically by the leader of the council and I’m very concerned about it.”

Long-standing Cllr Colin Bungey said: “This issue is probably the most important issue that I would have been involved in within all these years.”

Christchurch MP Christopher Chope said the consultation was a “concertinaed” process and “not healthy for our democracy”.

“Why are we going down this route of abolishing the independent Christchurch and East Dorset councils?” he said.

“We would lose control over our planning, our licensing, ability to set the council tax.

“All these issues will be removed from the people of Christchurch and become the responsibility of a remote authority.”

Cllr Ray Nottage told the Daily Echo that he could not attend the meeting because of his “constraints” as the leader of the council while the consultation was continuing.

“I would be in a considerable amount of difficulty if I was asked to persuade people one way or the other,” he said.

“I made that very clear to the CCA and to Christopher Chope just prior to the meeting.”