CHRISTCHURCH councillors have unleashed a broadside against the “biased”, “suspicious” and “discredited” super council consultation.

Members have criticised the contents of the survey questionnaire, prepared by Opinion Research Services (ORS) as instructed by the county’s council leaders, as well as the results of the consultation, carried out in late 2016.

It follows last month’s Christchurch referendum in which 84 per cent of those who voted, or 17,676 people, opposed the plan to merge the borough with Bournemouth and Poole under one unitary authority.

ORS found in its randomised household survey, which gained 4,258 responses from across the county, that 63 per cent of respondents in Christchurch backed the plan.

The consultation is the main source of evidence for popular support of the Future Dorset plan currently being examined by the Government.

Borough councillor Colin Bungey said: “We said at the beginning we thought the survey was biased, very slanted to lead people to one option.

“It was based on less than two per cent of the population of Dorset.”

The consultation consisted of the household survey, which ORS said was “more representative”, and an open questionnaire to which anyone could respond. The firm said 54 per cent of those in Christchurch who returned this latter document opposed Future Dorset.

“It was always very suspicious that only selected people were actually counted when it came to producing their final summary,” said Cllr Bungey.

“A lot of people took the time to return the questionnaire, but ORS said they weren’t representative. That I found very strange and disturbing.”

At a meeting on Tuesday Christchurch council resolved to write to ORS expressing the council’s “serious concern” about the credibility of the consultation.

Cllr David Jones said the referendum had “completely discredited” the consultation, which showed “contempt for ordinary people”.

“They told us they didn’t want public meetings as they might be dominated by activists, but an activist is just somebody who has taken the trouble to find out about it,” he said.

“The attitude is - you can’t trust ordinary people to make decisions.

“When this came up before in 1996 the Government wrote to every single household in Dorset and as a result Christchurch was not put into Bournemouth. This time they thought they would not risk that happening again.”

Cllr Margaret Phipps said another crucial part of the evidence currently before Communities Secretary Sajid Javid had been called into question.

“The Local Partnerships analysis was carried out in the spring/summer of 2016, so much has changed since then,” she said.

“Of two pieces of evidence the Secretary of State is looking at, the consultation is discredited and the analysis is out of date. And the third, the case for change, was based entirely on those two things. I just think we need to have another look at the whole thing.”

The response from ORS will be published in tomorrow’s Daily Echo.

QUESTIONS remain over the brief given to Opinion Research Services (ORS) by the leaders of Dorset's council and senior officers.

Christchurch councillor Colin Bungey said efforts by him and his colleagues to obtain the original brief had been unsuccessful.

“I think ORS got it wrong," he said.

"It may not have been their fault, maybe the brief they were given was ‘this is what we want to achieve, go achieve it’.

"We haven't seen that brief, although it has been asked for."

The councils backing the Future Dorset plan say the information provided in the survey was prepared by officers alongside ORS, and a separate analysis by Local Partnerships - a company part-owned by HM Treasury.

The survey itself has been criticised for allegedly asking leading questions.

It asked residents whether they prefer no change to the existing system or a reduction to two councils, and then which of three options for two councils they would prefer.