'NO change is not an option' if councils want to save money, is the message from county businesses.

An independent study commissioned by the Buckinghamshire Business First group showed merging the county council and four district councils into a single body would save more than £20million.

County Hall Leader Martin Tett said last week the current council setup needs to change - and businesses said yesterday the time to take action is now.

Guy Lachlan, spokesman for Buckinghamshire Business First, said at a press conference that councils should look to implement changes now before their reserve funds run out.

He said the five councils in Bucks are "facing a precipice in terms of local government funding", with the amount each receives in grants from Westminster falling each year.

Mr Lachlan said: "It isn't possible to say we will tinker with this or that - by 2020 it really will be so serious we will start to see councils having very serious equity problems.

"We should address it in a controlled way rather than in an emergency, when the fire's already started and it's too late to do anything.

"The councils can afford to do it - they do have cash reserves that could be used to fund these changes.

Guy Lachlan of BBF discusses the report with the Bucks Free Press

"You're better off doing it while you have these resources than doing it when you have literally no money.

"It's better discussing it as early as you can, rather than as late as you can."

The BBF-commissioned report, carried out by Ernst and Yougn, said creating a new single unitary authority was found to be the most cost effective restructure, bringing savings of £20.7million.

The report also concluded the creation of two unitaries, one for the south of the county and another for the north, would save £11.1million while amalgamating the four district councils into a single authority - while retaining the current two-tier structure at county and district level - would save £12.8million.

At the moment there are 248 county and district councillors, as well as eight town councils, 168 parish councils and 19 local area forums. The report said this can be streamlined to 90 councillors at unitary level, each of whom would represent 1,900 people.

A statement released last week by the four district councils was frosty in its reaction to the report but Mr Lachlan said: "We welcome their response and the fact they took it on board. It's good to see there's an acknowledgement of an issue there. We hope it's a sign the districts are going to be engaged in discussing the issues."

Philippa Batting, Managing Director of BBF, said: "The [county] council's ability to fund local services is becoming more and more challenging.

"Although Bucks hasn't sat still for the last five years and made some significant savings, there are further efficiencies to be delivered and service pressures continue to increase faster than funding can match.

"Doing nothing didn't seem to be an option."

A more detailed business case would need to be put forward before the proposals can be considered by council bosses however.