PLANS to suspend next year's elections to Dorset County Council have prompted a protest campaign.

Amid moves to abolish the authority and merge all of Dorset's nine councils into two larger authorities, there are talks taking place over whether to suspend the elections, due to take place next May.

All the options for change involve combining Bournemouth and Poole, while East Dorset and Christchurch could join them or be part of a new rural Dorset authority.

Dorset county councillors will be briefed in November on the prospect of putting off next May’s elections.

Chief executive Debbie Ward has said that members would prefer the spring 2017 elections not to go ahead, on the basis that if unitary councils were to be formed in 2019, the council would be spending £800,000 in 2017 on an election for a council which would not exist two years later.

“We are in contact with the Department for Communities and Local Government and a recommendation about the election will be put to the county council at its meeting in November," she said.

A petition on change.org, which has been set-up by a newly created group called Democracy for Dorset, is already gathering signatures.

The group, which involves Shaftesbury councillor Lester Taylor, already has nearly 150 signatures.

The online petition page states: "Dorset County Councillors have decided that pushing forward with their council 'reforms' is more important than your democratic right to hold them to account in planned local elections next year.

"The councillors have voted 'that the county council do not wish the elections to take place in 2017, as the council wishes to pursue Local Government reform, subject to the results of the public consultation'.

"Democracy is far too precious to allow a bunch of Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors to muck about with it. Councillors should be working to deliver more democracy to the people of Dorset, not removing it.

"This is unconstitutional and undemocratic. Join us in fighting for your democratic right to have your say on May 4, 2017.

"How else can you hold them to account for their performance over the past four years?"

To sign the petition go to change.org/p/dorset-county-council-democracy-for-dorset-now.