New Weymouth Town Council clerk Jane Biscombe will be working full time for the new council from the second week in January.

She is already working part-time, helping prepare for the start of the new council in April 2019.

Her job will include supporting the first elections to the new council in May next year and developing the council’s strategic plan.

She has been a Town Clerk and Responsible Financial Officer for over three years working as the Town Clerk for Yateley Town Council in Hampshire since 2015. In 2017 she was awarded the title of New Clerk of the Year in 2017 by the Society of Local Council Clerks.

The new council will cover the whole of the borough except the area presently covered by Portland Town Council and will have 29 councillors in 12 wards.

Borough councillors heard on Thursday that a steering group of seven councillors had been set up to prepare for the new council with a decision expected in January by the borough council about which assets will be transferred to the town. That decision will also have to be ratified by the shadow executive of the new unitary Dorset Council.