A company's "Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year" message to a job-starved dale has gone down like a bag of wet cement.

The advertisement was placed by French conglomerate Lafarge in a community newspaper in Weardale, County Durham - where the firm made nearly 350 workers redundant in April when it closed its cement plant.

Families, former union leaders and politicians in the dale described it as "the final insult".

Durham county councillor John Shuttleworth, who recently joined a Government-backed task force set up to try to bring new industry to Weardale, said last night: "This has got to be the biggest slap in the face to people in the dale."

Coun Shuttleworth went on to describe a "catalogue of insensitive errors" by the Lafarge management.

These included changing the name of the 37-year-old former Blue Circle company to Lafarge only days after it was taken over by the French firm, then asking redundant workers to join the Lafarge shares scheme.

Bill Wilthew, former GMBU convenor at the Lafarge plant at Eastgate, said he thought the placing of the advertisement was "ham-fisted and laughable".

Joe Emerson, who worked at the factory for 28 years, said: "This has got to be the final insult for most of the lads who were proud to be Blue Circle men.

"Instead of wishing us a Happy Christmas, Lafarge should have been advertising what they are going to do with the cement works and giving us some hope for the future."

There are now only 21 workers employed at the Eastgate site - and they will leave next March.

A spokesman for Lafarge in London said the company did not wish to comment on the advertisement