An independent report published today into the handling of foot-and-mouth disease in one of the country's worst-affected counties is highly critical of the Government's handling of the outbreak.

Northumberland County Council commissioned an inquiry into how the disease affected local communities and it has found that the authorities were slow to respond initially.

But it has also found that too many animals were slaughtered during the following weeks and months as the virus spread across the county.

The problem of disposing of so many carcasses then blighted the lives of residents who lived around burial sites, the report said today.

The panel chairman, countryside expert Professor Michael Dower, criticised the Government for not sending officials from Defra the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to the five-day-long hearing last month.

He told the launch of the report: "Most of the critique is directed squarely at the Government.

"I believe it was a public relations disaster for them and they did themselves, as well as Northumberland, a disservice by not appearing at the hearing."

The inquiry panel heard submissions from 140 individuals and organisations with 80 witnesses attending.

Professor Dower added: "We were troubled by the critique of how the outbreak was handled and by the absence of Defra."

Professor Dower today said it was a "painful privilege" to lead the inquiry, as he felt the hearing, in Morpeth last month, had helped people recover from the trauma of the outbreak.

He added: "It was painful to share that anger and grief, to hear of that sense of loss that people suffered, and to hear this fairly comprehensive critique of the way the outbreak was handled."

The report said: "Northumberland was the county first into, and last out of, the national foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001."

More than 300 farms or 230,000 animals, were culled and three-quarters of farms were placed under some form of restrictions.

The inquiry found the crisis was not effectively handled locally until an emergency control centre was set up in Newcastle five weeks after the first case was confirmed. The panel found many people were not kept adequately informed - including those involved in handling the crisis.

The report also stated that the Government's strict policy of culling on farms within three kilometres of infected premises led to "the slaughter of substantially more animals than were needed in order to contain and eradicate the disease".

Due to a lack of "common sense" implementation of policy by experts on the ground, "more farms were chosen for culling than was needed" and "a very high proportion of the stock killed were shown by post mortem blood tests to be clean of the disease".

Professor Dower, a former director general of the Countryside Commission and a lecturer in European rural development at the University of Gloucestershire, could not say how many animals were in the county were culled needlessly.

The report said more culled stock should have been buried on farms, as was recommended by the Duke of Northumberland's report into the 1967 outbreak, rather than buried at mass sites.

Northumberland County Council leader Michael Davey said he would refer to today's report when he met Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett.