Council to reduce membership

Wards to reduce to four if inqury report is positive

Douglas council is to reduce the number of wards from six to four and its membership from 18 to 12.

Council leader David Christian says the Council has recognised that the time has come to establish a new, more entrepreneurial model of local government for Douglas which "better reflects the demands of a growing borough in the 21st century and lead to greater involvement by members in the council’s decision-making process".

He also believes reducing the number of wards to four will bring about fairer representation and increase competition in elections.

Originally the intention had been to retain all six wards, represented by two instead of three elected members in each. But the council says there was a marked imbalance in the number of voters in each of the wards.

Mr Christian said they were aware of the work done by a select committee of Tynwald prior to the 2016 General Election to the Keys, in making voter numbers as equal as possible across all constituencies, including the four in Douglas.

The council resolved to reduce its membership by adopting the four revised House of Keys constituencies as wards with three members elected to represent each of them and proposal was put to the DOI with notice that any objections were to be lodged by 4th October.

None were received and if the outcome of the public inquiry due tomorrow (13th Dec) is positive, the new model of local government for Douglas will come into effect in 2020.