A public inquiry is to be held today (Thursday) into a plan to slim down Douglas’s local authority.

It is being held in the town hall from 10am.

The council wants to cut the number of councillors from 18 to 12 and redraw the electoral map so there would be four wards rather than six.

Those wards would be the same as House of Keys constituencies.

Council leader David Christian said the authority wanted to ’establish a new, more entrepreneurial model of local government’.

He hoped that it would lead to greater involvement by members in the council’s decision-making process and, in reducing ward numbers to four, bring about fairer representation and increase competition in elections.

He said: ’In short, we are strengthening the democratic process.’

Originally the intention had been to retain all six wards, but represented by two instead of three elected members in each.

But the council identified a marked disparity between the wards. Some, notably Hills and Athol, had grown so large they dwarfed some of the smaller, historic, wards closer to the town centre.

That meant that the number of voters represented by members in some wards was far larger than in others, which created a noticeable imbalance in representation.

’People in the Isle of Man are generally aware of which House of Keys constituency they live in,’ said Mr Christian.

’It was against this background that 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 with effect from the 2020 local election.’

The council put the plan out to public consultation. By the deadline, on October 5, nobody had objected.

If the Department of Infrastrucure backs the council’s plan after today’s public inquiry, a new model of local government will come into effect in 2020.