Town councillors in Dorchester have voted to continue with multi-councillor wards for the new Dorset Council, rather than opt for single councillor areas.

The changes are being suggested by the Boundary Commission and, if approved, will see three councillors for the West ward and two for the east.

Labour vice chairman Barry Thompson said his party favoured five single councillor wards for the town – east, west, north west (Poundbury), north and south.

He said this achieved Boundary Commission aims and would be better to have small geographical areas where individual councillors could be held accountable.

He was also critical of the Boundary Commission for not broadening the consultation process: “All political parties, not just those with current serving councillors, and community associations and individual residents should be consulted as widely as possible,” he said.

Mr Thompson said there could also be a case for Poundbury to have its own ward for both unitary and town council elections.

But town councillors disagreed and voted 12-2 to back the Commission’s proposals for five councillors for the town – split 3-2 between the west and east wards.

Cllr Stella Jones said that since 1973 Dorchester has had multi-councillor wards, a system which had worked well, allowing them to share case work and support each other.

Support for some of the Labour ideas came from Conservative councillor Peter Stein: “The guidance is for single member wards. It’s not clear in my mind why we should support multi-member wards, apart from the fact that it has always been that way.”

Cllr Gerald Duke said he was surprised that the 3-2 option had been put forward as he recalled, at the proposal stage, backing being given to the single member option: “I’m not quite sure why the officers put the multi-councillor ward option forward,” he said.

Cllr Molly Rennie supported the multi-councillor ward option. She said that the single member ward option for a town the size of Dorchester would see individual councillors quickly overloaded with case work.

She said that she valued having other ward councillors to share the workload and to help each other, irrespective of political party. She also warned that in the event of holiday or illness single wards would be left unrepresented whereas multi-member wards meant year round cover was likely to be achieved and also gave constituents the choice of which councillor to go to.

The council also supported the ward arrangements for town council elections – 20 councillors in total split seven for the north ward, five for both east and west and three for south.