THE number of councillors in Brighton and Hove could be cut to save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

Council leader Warren Morgan, writing exclusively for The Argus following our budget revelations this week, said he and fellow political leaders had agreed to an independent review of councillor numbers and costs.

He said residents will expect councillors “not to be spared" in the cuts that will reduce the council’s budget by a third.

Fellow councillors said they had concerns that cutting numbers would leave remaining elected members overworked and would reduce scrutiny of how taxpayers’ money was spent.

The city currently has 54 councillors which cost taxpayers £855,000 in allowances and travel subsidies in 2014/15.

The number of members has reduced since the merging of Brighton and Hove councils saw the fledgling city council represented by 78 councillors in 1999.

Early suggested changes include reducing the number of councillors to two per ward - some wards currently have three - leaving the city with 42 elected members.

Conservative councillor Garry Peltzer Dunn said he did not believe there was an excessive number of councillors and that it would be a “mistake” to go ahead with a significant reduction.

He said: “If there is a consultation, it should not just be measured on financial savings but also on our effectiveness and how much public representation and service residents want from their councillors.

“Culling a third of backbench councillors would save around £200,000 a year which in a budget of £800 million is infinitesimally small.”

Labour councillor Alan Robins said Portslade had seen its number of councillors reduced in recent years from six to four and at times it had become hard to keep up with the workload.

He added: “A review might not necessarily come back and say we need to lose councillors, it might come back and suggest we might need more.”

Fellow Labour councillor Peter Atkinson said: “I think it’s right to look at every aspect of council spending and councillors can’t be spared from that but I think we need to wait and see what the report says.

“I can only speak for myself but I’m incredibly busy in North Portslade as is my colleague Penny Gilbey, we have a lot of casework because people are under a lot of pressure in their lives.”

Green councillor Ollie Sykes said he was in favour of councillor numbers being looked at having attempted to propose changes during the previous Green administration.

He said: “Anyone thinking that changing a number of councillors will have a huge financial impact on the budget has another thing coming.

“The total cost of 54 councillors is around £1 million but if you changed that to 40 and gave them a bit more money to make it more like a full-time job, it would not save much.

“But I do agree that we should share some of the burden.”