AS North Yorkshire County Council is hoping to go down the road of unitary status, with the abolition of local district councils, here are a few words of advice to residents.

The unitary council will no doubt bring in recruitment consultants, to head hunt new senior management. The old management will no doubt be given enhanced retirement packages, and a case made that because the authority is so large, that salaries will need to enlarge substantially, even when in a recession.

A case will be made that the next tier of management will see salaries increase – bearing in mind that they will probably be doing the same job as before. In the case of Durham, some senior staff went home on Friday, earning £71,000 per year and arrived back on the Monday on £110,000 and they were doing the same job.

Durham county councillor John Shuttleworth