A parish council has taken the unusual step of asking to have its number of councillors reduced.

Kings Hill Parish Council has asked Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council to carry out what is known as a Community Governance Review, with the aim of reducing the number of parish councillors from 12 to 10.

The council says that 10 members is sufficient to fully represent the electorate and will “not negatively affect the democratic process”.

The council chairman Tony Petty told Kent Online: “It is about the quality of the councilors you have, not the quantity.

“We have a very good team at present that work well together. That is not to say that we don't have strong discussions and differences of opinion.”

The move follows the last parish council elections in May, at which there were just 12 candidates for the 12 seats, which resulted in all 12 candidates being automatically “elected”.

The law requires successful candidates to sign an acceptance-of-office form either before or at the first full council meeting following the election – that meeting was on May 11.

The council says that two of the newly elected councillors failed to sign the acceptance form. One was on holiday and was not at the meeting. The other was ejected from the hall by police on the night of the meeting, although he said he did hand in a signed acceptance form via another councillor.

The council has the discretion to permit councillors to sign their declarations late.

But at the following council meeting, on June 22, during a closed session in which the public was excluded, the other councillors voted not to accept the late declarations of the two elected councillors. Meaning there are now officially two vacancies.

At the same meeting, the council voted to seek a reduction in councillor numbers from 12 to 10, which if agreed, would save their having to re-advertise the vacancies.

Two members of the council were themselves absent from that meeting, Cllr Sarah Barker and Cllr Angela Vincent.

There is no fixed number of councillors determined by law for parish councils, but there is a nationally accepted scale based on the size of the electorate.

Kings Hill has 6,726 voters, which according to the scale, suggests it should have between nine and sixteen councillors.

Were it to be successful in cutting its number to 10, it would have fewer councillors than Borough Green, East Peckham, Hildenborough, Leybourne and West Mailing, which all have 11 councillors, although they all have only around half the number of voters as Kings Hill.

Indeed Ditton, already has more councillors than Kings Hill, with 13, even though it has fewer voters – just 3,745.

Hadlow has 13 councillors, although it has only 2,920 voters.

Kings Hill’s request will be considered by the borough’s General Purposes Committee on Wednesday, October 11.

But the borough’s electoral registration officer is advising that the request be refused.

He said: “Kings Hill Parish is growing quickly due to the increased number of properties being built there.

“The large electorate would be better served by having a larger number of councillors.

“It would also make the job of parish councillor in this parish easier, with more hands to spread the workload.”

Cllr Petty dismissed that argument. He said: “We’re happy with the decision we made.

“This doesn’t have to be a permanent thing. If in a few years’ time, we feel we need more councillors, we can ask for the number to be raised again.”