Plans for a new Weymouth Town Council need to be sped up – according to Mayor Cllr Gill Taylor.

In a plea to Thursday’s borough council scrutiny and performance committee she said that time was running out to set up the new council by April 2019, when local government reorganisation takes place.

“Looking at your forward plan there was nothing about the town council on it and I was quite concerned about that,” she said.

“We only have nine to10 months to get this in place and a lot of it will be rushed.”

Agreeing to put it on future committee agendas chairman Cllr Andy Blackwood said he was happy to help progress moves towards setting up the new council and to assist in working out how it would operate for local people once the borough council was disbanded.

There has been criticism at previous borough council meetings that the town could miss out unless the new town council was quickly set up. It was said that neighbours Dorchester and Bridport, which already have long established town councils, were already negotiating about which services they would take over at the time of local government reorganisation in April 2019.

Once the Weymouth Town Council is formed it is expected to be the biggest in Dorset and one of the biggest in the South West – possibly employing around 50 people.