Bosses at Aylesbury Vale District Council have said they will look further at becoming a unitary authority - but leaders at the county's other three councils have urged them to wait until after the next elections.

Plans to merge services between Aylesbury Vale and Buckinghamshire County Council to create a one-tier council will be explored in further detail if members officially approve the motion early next year.

The move has the backing of all four political groups in Aylesbury, the council said in a statement yesterday.

But the leaders of Wycombe, South Bucks and Chiltern District Councils have said the proposals should not be considered until after May's local elections.

They said that while the councils had started sharing services in recent years, there was "no appetite for structural change" from central government.

In a joint statement the leaders of the three district councils in the south of the county, Cllrs Richard Scott, Adrian Busby and Isobel Darby, said: "We would emphasise the importance of the southern district councils working together and with our partners to achieve greater savings, resilience and improved service quality.

"Through our Chiltern and South Bucks shared management arrangements and Chiltern and Wycombe Joint Waste Partnership, we have an established track record of achieving results together. We are not complacent and recognise there is still more to do.

"As stated above, we will continue to do this through working together. For example, reviewing the strategic planning for future housing needs in Buckinghamshire; working together on mitigating the impact of HS2 – perhaps the greatest threat to the environment of the area; and through more shared services.

"Government has been quite clear there is no appetite for structural change and we believe our three councils have a lot to offer in responding to the needs of our local communities, whilst driving out further savings. The unitary solutions being talked about elsewhere do not recognise the need to be responsive to the differing needs of our communities in the south of the county.

"In the meantime, we repeat from our statement of September this year, that it is important not to get distracted from continuing to improve our delivery of high quality, cost effective services and we are quite prepared to revisit the debate on unitary authorities after the forthcoming general and local elections to be held in May 2015."

Aylesbury Vale leader Neil Blake said however: "It’s been clear to us for some time that the only way we can put the interests of local people first, is by changing the way we are organised and how we deliver services.

"However, that’s not enough. We need to have a step change in how we deliver services to our community.

"We have a proven track record of transforming the services that we provide, making them more efficient, cost effective and customer focused. These same principles will obviously need to be applied in the new unitary authority."

He added: "There are also some challenges that are specific to Aylesbury Vale. The vast majority of future housing and employment growth across the county area will be in the Vale and we want to be sure that we can manage that growth to achieve the maximum benefit for local residents and businesses. We believe that’s going to be more difficult to achieve within the current structure of local government where, inevitably, the resources of the county council have to be spread further afield.

"We are open minded about how the detail of a unitary council might operate. The most important thing to do now is to start the debate with the local community and explore what choices would work best."