RIVAL city councillors blamed each other for Salisbury’s failure to secure a merger with Laverstock and Ford at a meeting on Monday.

Wiltshire Council last week voted overwhelmingly in favour of Laverstock and Ford remaining outside the city, after its parish council fought a “hostile takeover bid” from Salisbury.

The result put in jeopardy a deal to transfer key assets from Wiltshire Council to Salisbury, including CCTV.

City councillors traded insults about where their campaign had gone wrong, as three of the most powerful men on Wiltshire Council – deputy leader John Thomson, finance boss Dick Tonge, and transport chief Philip Whitehead, watched from the public gallery.

Tories accused Labour’s Ian Tomes of betraying the city by voting in Laverstock’s favour, while Labour blamed the Conservatives for forcing an early vote to accept the asset transfer, without a proper financial plan.

Tory leader Matthew Dean said it had been a “tremendous lost opportunity”, but a formal challenge on the outcome would only “prolong the agony”.

Salisbury’s failure to “speak with one voice” had been “immensely damaging”, he said.

Cllr Dean said his Conservative group would work on some “hard and fast proposals” on how to salvage the asset transfer deal.

Labour group leader Mike Osment said it was a pity the council had not negotiated with Laverstock, but even if the takeover had succeeded, it would not have solved the financial problems posed by the asset transfer. It was time to start the “difficult job” of rebuilding the city’s relationship with Laverstock, he said.

Cllr Osment added that the asset transfer had been “hijacked” at the previous meeting, when Tory councillors pushed through a vote to accept the deal early.

“I find that quite amazing, because Conservatives are supposed to be financially prudent,” he said. “To make decisions without knowing the long-term cost I think was foolish.”

After the city lost 300 homes at Bishopdown Farm to Laverstock, Labour’s Ian Tomes said the residents felt “neglected and ignored” by Salisbury.

He said the city council had been “winging it” by accepting the deal early: “an appalling piece of local government”.

Tory Sven Hocking said losing 300 homes to Laverstock was “beyond the pale”.

“I can’t understand why councillors in this room actively worked on behalf of another parish against the residents of this city, just to put greater financial pressures on them in years to come,” he said.

Green Michael Pope said the deal was not “dead in the water”.

Lib Dem James Robertson said any council tax rise would hit poor households, while Independent Margaret Willmot said she was disappointed by the “unhelpful and unfair anti-Salisbury feeling” from some councillors.

Labour’s John Walsh said it was a “great shame” the council had not worked together, and discouraged Cllr Dean from starting his own asset-transfer talks with Wiltshire Council.

Labour’s Mark Timbrell called for a cross-party working group on the negotiations, led by Andrew Roberts, while his colleague Tom Corbin accused Wiltshire Councillors of using CCTV to blackmail councillors into accepting the asset transfer.

“With egg on our faces, we no longer have an agreed strategy for doing the asset transfer, we have lost 300 houses where we need not have lost any and we no longer have a functioning CCTV system,” he said.

Tory Colin Froude accused LFPC of publishing “misleading, untrue and defamatory” information in its parish newsletter during the campaign.

LFPC chairman David Burton said: “We always publish residents’ views in the newsletter and we have published unabridged responses from Colin on this issue.”

At the end of the meeting, Salisbury Mayor Derek Brown called for a “period of calm reflection”, adding: “This is a critical issue that needs to be resolved shortly.”

Cllr Whitehead told the meeting he would not close Salisbury’s public toilets.