RESIDENTS in the South Bucks District may find themselves living in new electoral wards and with new polling stations to visit in next year’s elections - as the authority prepares to slash 12 of its 40 councillors.

The district council says this means councillors will be able to represent their community more evenly, and could also mean cost savings of more than £50,000 The move will redraw the boundary lines of the district's wards, which will themselves be cut from 19 to 12.

Residents may also find that a different number of councillors will be representing the ward they live in.

For instance, a single Gerrards Cross electoral ward will, broadly speaking, replace the three that currently exist (Gerrards Cross South; Gerrards Cross North; and Gerrards Cross East and Denham South West), although three councillors will serve the new ward.

Alan Goodrum, chief executive of SBDC, said that the councillors had not been perturbed at the drop in their numbers to 28. He said: "The councillors wanted to do this. It’s quite an ambitious thing to do for a small council. There are always people who are retiring anyway, although I daresay there may be one or two disappointments in the selection process.

"It’s something that members very much wanted to do."

The changes will come into force when residents will vote at the election on May 7 next year.

The decision was made after a public consultation looking at electoral reviews of local authority areas.

While most of the written feedback to the consultation from residents was generally in agreement with the move, both Iver and Wexham Parish Councils raised concerns, fearing it could adversely affect the respresentation of communities in South Bucks, and also that not enough information about the consequences of the move had been forthcoming at that time.

SBDC says that although the move was not financially motivated, around £50,000 a year is expected to be saved by the changes, along with other efficiency savings.

Instead, the change has come about because of discrepancies in the number of people represented by each councillor in the current electoral ward arrangement. For instance, in one ward there are currently 430 more people than in another in South Bucks.

The Local Government Boundary Exchange Commission, an independent body set up by Parliament to review electoral arrangements, recommends a variance of no more than 10 per cent in electorate numbers should exist between wards - this is exceeded by several current SBDC wards.

The boundaries have been redrawn with input from the LGBEC, and allow the reduction in councillors’ numbers. SBDC says that 28 councillors is the optimum number the authority should have "without compromising the democratic process".

Councillors will now represent roughly the same number of people, and SBDC says they will continue to fulfil the same number of functions.

All voters in the South Bucks District will be contacted by letter in February when their registration and voting arrangements will be confirmed.

Anyone not currently registered can go online to do so at www.gov.uk/register-to-vote Next year’s election will be the most complex ever staged in South Bucks, with the General Election happening alongside the district and parish elections - the first time all three have been held simultaneously.