This Summer the electorate in County Durham were asked whether they were in favour of a single countywide unitary authority. There was a 40% turnout and 3 in 4 were against the proposals. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6767917.stm

We're throwing many very good and hardworking councillors on the scrapheap. When PR was introduced in Scotland many of our councillors got a golden goodbye to thank them for their service - yet in England they get nothing and will have to fight it out against their party colleagues for the handful of seats available and further damaging morale.  The demands of the new authority will mean that it will be very hard for those to be a successful councillor and hold a full-time job. This will inevitably make it harder for those with families to represent their communities and it will be confined to the retired.

Not only that, but we've got the prospect of wasting over a million pounds rebranding the new council County Durham Council as opposed to Durham County Council (I kid you not). There are different forms of local reorganisation taking place around the country. I'm worried that it's going to really divide and weaken our party in these areas and the way it's been handled by Hazel Blears in particular has been appalling.

Gwyneth Dunwoody in Cheshire is equally livid.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm071218/debtext/71218-0006.htm

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm071218/debtext/71218-0007.htm

It is worth reading the full statement but includes a devastating criticism of Blears .

'I have been in the House long enough to see the coming and going of many inadequate personalities. I have seen those on both sides of the House who have been promoted for various reasons. I have seen the crawlers. I have seen those who have used sex— [ Interruption. ] Oh, there are so many it would take too long to name them. I have seen those whose sexual preferences were of interest to others. I have seen those who demonstrated a great commitment to their own interests, irrespective of the political parties that they were supposed to represent.

But I have rarely seen a decision such as this, taken with such cynicism and with so little respect for the interests of the average voter. When the Secretary of State was seeking office as the deputy leader of the Labour party, she said that people frequently become disaffected with their own Government because they feel that no one is listening to them. Wherever could they have got that idea from? She also made it clear—she told us constantly—that she would listen.

Let me make it very plain: this decision will affect everything in my constituency—every practical purpose that I am pursuing at the moment. Three new health centres, a new school, which is desperately needed in one of the most deprived areas, and a new railway station: all those things will be scuppered by this decision, which will make my local government fundamentally uncertain not only in economic terms, but in its political control.

If I may say so, the decision has been taken with a degree of cynicism that I have not seen for some time. I do not believe that it is in the interests of the Labour party, but then it has never been pretended that the decision is in the interests of the Labour party or of individual voters. It is not in the interests of those who work in the health service, the education service, or social services, or of those who want decent, high-quality local government services. I believe that it is a decision that has been taken for the most venal and personal reasons, and I find it wholly and deeply objectionable.'