OPPOSITION councillors in Poole are calling for a change to the voting system when Dorset’s new unitary councils are established.

A motion signed by five Liberal Democrat councillors will be debated at a council meeting on Tuesday.

They want to see elections to the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority in 2019 to be conducted by a system of proportional representation.

As reported in the Daily Echo last week, former Poole MP Dame Annette Brooke wrote to Communities Secretary Sajid Javid requesting the new authority adopt a single transferable vote system.

She said since the decision to merge the county’s councils had been made, with discussion carried out “behind closed doors”, the reorganisation should provide the opportunity for a change in the voting system.

Liberal Democrats and the Green Party support proportional representation as providing fairer representation in political bodies. However, critics argue the voting system increases instability as it can give rise to coalition governments.

Councillor Mike Brooke, who has signed the motion, along with Cllr David Brown, Sandra Moore, Vikki Slade, and Marion Le Poidevin, said a proportional voting system for the new unitary authority would reduce the chances of an “over-dominant party”.

“We’re very much in favour of proportional representation. It gives a balanced political situation which enables us to make proper decisions, sensible decisions, not least around better representation.

“We’ve seen in Poole the effect of an over-dominant party that just makes decisions and ignores residents, ignores opposition and does their own things like the public space protection orders, which all reasonable people are totally against.

“We’ve written to Sajid Javid asking him to allow it to happen as a trial because this is a wonderful opportunity. Proportional representation voting systems in Scotland operate that way.

“We think this is a wonderful opportunity for the government to trial in local government a new voting system for a new council.”

Cllr Le Poidevin said: “I think it would be good to have proportional representation in place in all authorities.

“First past the post voting just doesn’t represent the views of all people.

“As things stand, if we add all three councils together we’ve only got about 17 out of 100 people who are not Conservative. Clearly that doesn’t reflect people’s political views in the locality.”

The new unitary councils in Dorset, one covering the conurbation, the other the rural county, are to be established in April next year with elections taking place a month later.

The form of those elections will be determined in Parliament by statute.