Ipswich council to not change its number of councillors

Ipswich is divided into 16 council wards, with three councillors in each - totalling 48 representatives.

This is higher compared to the other councils with similar public finances.

However, a review by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE), recommended that the strength of the council should remain at 48 because of the wide range of services it delivers.

The borough council will discuss this report at its meeting next Wednesday. 

The LGBCE is an independent statutory body responsible for conducting reviews of local authority electoral arrangements through an 'electoral review' process. 

Therefore they conducted a review of the borough council to see how representative it was for the number of people that live within its boundaries. 

Neil MacDonald is the current leader of the council (Image: Phil Smart)

In the report, the LGBCE officer wrote: "Ipswich Borough Council directly delivers a much greater range of services than most other councils of its type and this naturally generates a greater amount and variety of casework; a lower than average number of electors per councillor might then reasonably be expected to mitigate this, but the council actually has approximately the mean number of electors per councillor (for unparished second-tier authorities).

"Councillors have also noted an increase in casework over recent years and were the number of councillors to be reduced this would further increase the workload for the remaining councillors.

"Larger proportions of time being spent on casework by councillors would reduce capacity to strategically lead the council and make complex decisions in a challenging financial climate."

The LGBCE also looked at the possibility of increasing the number of councillors in Ipswich, however because of the additional costs it believed that this cannot be justified.