THE statement in your feature on local government reorganisation (Echo, May 11) that three years ago "People also voted for a county-wide unitary council instead of three"

is extremely misleading.

For several reasons that vote was totally unrepresentative. It was a hypothetical question asking what the second-tier council should be if a regional assembly was approved.

The only alternatives offered were the county council as a unitary authority, or three new area councils. We were not allowed to vote on the option of the existing district councils.

The county council' publicists worked very hard in the run-up to the vote to persuade us to vote for them, but there was no organisation to speak for the three proposed area councils.

Despite all that, the result of the vote was 51 per cent for a countywide council and 49 per cent for the option of three area councils - the barest of bare majorities. This was hardly a ringing vote of confidence in the county council.

The situation has not changed since then; the Government is determined to force a single-tier local authority on us in order to make room for the regional assembly that we overwhelmingly rejected three years ago.

Ian Forsyth, Durham.

SUMMER is coming and it's time to get the flip-flops out. That is presumably why the district councils in County Durham have performed yet another flip-flop on the future of local government (Echo, May 11).

All of them - except Durham City - told us only a few weeks ago that they wanted to achieve unitary government for County Durham by the year 2011.

But they have now chorused instead that they hoped to keep the present two-tier system. That is a rather quick flip. To cap it all, a few days earlier they joined up with a couple of other councils in a legal move to stop the whole process.

Hopefully, that will be a flop.

I wonder what their next change of mind will be. How can we trust what they say today if they so easily say something different tomorrow?

John Ashby, Durham City.