THE NFU heirarchy came under strong criticism for its radical plans for reorganisation, with redundancies for some staff and the specialist policy advisers taking on a more general role.

Advisers would become jacks of all trades, working from home with a specific patch, rather than a region, to cover. To receive the specialist help they have provided, NFU members would have to telephone a national call centre which it is proposed to staff with only two people.

The NFU's ten regional technical advisers would be reduced to six and would have to compete against each other for those posts. In future one would cover the whole of the North of England.

Committee members were aghast at the proposals and warned that they could lead to many members believing the NFU was distancing itself from grass-root members.

"This sounds like the NFU sticking their heads in the sand and concentrating on reducing costs and forgetting the service to members," said Mr Richard Thornton, a former chairman of Northumberland County NFU.

He believed the hierarchy would "get one hell of a shock" if they thought two people at a call centre could handle members' specialist inquiries. He also feared it could create an intolerable amount of extra work for farmers who became chairmen and office holders.

Mr Richard Betton believed the proposals were totally unacceptable. "I think the NFU council was bounced into this," he said.

Another member was supported when he complained that members were having to pay higher subscriptions for what appeared to be a reduced and distant service.

Committee members were angry and felt the service to members would suffer. They were particularly concerned that the North-East region would lose the good specialist advice it had enjoyed from staff.

The proposals were presented to the national NFU council in October and were said to be necessary to meet the major changes affecting the industry.

They include creating a new rural affairs department and splitting the existing food and marketing department into two to form a strengthened marketing section and a new food and science department.

The technical department would focus more on reducing input costs and regulations and the livestock and crop departments would be merged to form an overall commodity department with specialist sectors for beef, sheep and less favoured areas; dairy; poultry; arable; horticulture, and sugar.

Staff are still being consulted and waiting to hear exactly what their new roles will be, but it is known that there is concern that they will no longer be specialists.

Redundancies in the North-East region include the legal adviser and administrator, who are based at York, and some support staff are also expected to go.

Nationally, the NFU is expected to move out of its costly London headquarters to a cheaper base, possibly near Heathrow.

The changes could also see some of the NFU's geographical boundaries being changed. It has already been announced that the central region will be disbanded and livestock committee members questioned what might happen to York County NFU.

Mr Richard Macdonald, NFU director general, was expected to be grilled about the proposals at yesterday's annual meeting of the North Riding and Durham County NFU at Croft.

l Mr Ben Gill, NFU president, will address the annual meeting of York County NFU at the regional office, Tadcaster Road, on Friday, November 24 at 10.30. Mr Richard Ellison, regional director, will give an updated report on the Next Steps restructuring proposals