Councillors decide on 19 October whether 57,000 electors in unparished Cheltenham get a town council with 15 wards and 26 seats from April 2028.
Cheltenham could get its first town council. Borough councillors will vote on Monday 19 October on a plan to create Cheltenham Town Council for the roughly 57,000 electors who live in the parts of the borough that have no parish council today. The new council would come into being on 1 April 2028, with its first elections on the ordinary election day that year.
The recommendation is set out in a report to full council from the council leader, Councillor Rowena Hay. It is item 9 on the agenda for 2.30pm on 19 October at the Municipal Offices. The council announced the proposal in a news release on 9 October.
What councillors are being asked to approve
The report closes a Community Governance Review that began in May 2025. If councillors agree, the package would:
- create Cheltenham Town Council for the whole unparished area, shown on Map 5
- divide it into 15 wards, matching the existing borough wards: All Saints, Battledown, Charlton Park, College, Fiddlers Green, Hester’s Way, Lansdown, Oakley, Park, Pittville, Springbank, St Mark’s, St Paul’s, St Peter’s and Swindon Village
- set up a shadow town council straight away, made up of the current borough ward councillors for those areas, to prepare for the launch
- extend Up Hatherley parish to take in Benhall and The Reddings, renaming it Up Hatherley with Benhall and The Reddings
- move Wyman’s Brook from Prestbury parish into Swindon parish
- extend Leckhampton with Warden Hill parish
- leave Charlton Kings parish exactly as it is
A separate report on which services, buildings and civic assets would transfer to the town council, and what it would charge, is promised “in due course”.
How many councillors?
The council’s news release says the town council would have 25 councillors. The report councillors will actually vote on recommends 26, and its ward-by-ward allocation adds up to 26. Each ward would get one or two seats:
Two wards that could have gone to neighbouring parishes end up in the town council instead. The unparished pocket between Prestbury and Charlton Kings, around 650 electors bounded by Imjin Road and Burma Avenue, holds the cemetery, the crematorium and playing fields. The working group decided those assets “would be better placed within the larger Town Council’s area”. Battledown, which Charlton Kings Parish Council wanted, was judged “more closely associated with the Town”.
The West Cheltenham parish that was dropped
The third round of consultation also floated a new parish for the west of the borough, covering Hester’s Way, Springbank and Fiddlers Green, about 10,400 electors. The report drops it.
Residents and community leaders warned that the area could not sustain its own parish. The report cites the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, which put parts of Hester’s Way in the most deprived quarter of the country, alongside high demand for youth work and play areas, “a low council tax base to support a parish council precept”, and volunteers already stretched by running support groups and food banks. Those areas go into the town council instead.
What residents said
Three consultations ran between 19 May 2025 and 31 July 2026:
| Stage | Dates | Responses | Headline result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 19 May to 18 July 2025 | 101 | Review the parish boundaries and ask about a town council |
| 2 | 24 February to 29 March 2026 | 137 | 73% supported a Cheltenham town council |
| 3 | 22 June to 31 July 2026 | 177 online, plus 6 long-form emails | Boundary options for every parish |
The report admits the stage 2 response rate “was fairly low”. On the parish boundary questions “not sure” was often the most common answer: 66% for the Swindon change and 54% for the Leckhampton with Warden Hill change.
What changes for the five existing parishes
- Swindon: boundary extended to take in polling district RB, the Wyman’s Brook area now in Prestbury parish. Still 9 councillors. The parish council endorsed the change after initially saying it was happy with no change.
- Prestbury: loses Wyman’s Brook, keeps 15 councillors. It had asked for the pocket by the cemetery, and accepted the case for putting it in the town council instead.
- Charlton Kings: no change to boundary, 17 councillors or wards.
- Leckhampton with Warden Hill: takes in polling districts EB, TA and TD, lifting its electorate from about 7,103 to about 9,100. Keeps 18 councillors, redrawn across four wards: Leckhampton Undercliff 1, Leckhampton Mead 1, Leckhampton Village 9, Warden Hill 7.
- Up Hatherley: takes in Benhall and The Reddings, rising to about 9,600 electors. Keeps 16 councillors across three new wards: Up Hatherley East 1, Up Hatherley West 12, Benhall and The Reddings 3. The report notes the parish “might then be split into two” at a future review. In the consultation, 49% backed the extension and 26% opposed it.
Why now
The review was started because of the government’s plan to replace Gloucestershire’s seven councils with a single unitary authority. The report says that reorganisation “has been paused at the time of drafting this report” while the government reviews the process, but the council “is operating on the basis that this will resume”.
The report says the town council “would require significant administrative and support staff including a highly experienced Town Clerk/CEO”. The pause, it adds, gives the council time to map every asset and decide which should transfer.
What it means for you
- Council tax. A town council raises its own precept, added to the bill. The report does not put a figure on it. It does say the borough’s set-up costs can be reclaimed “through the first annual precept of the new Town Council”, so the first bill in 2028/29 would carry those costs. Our council tax bands page shows what parish precepts add in the five existing parishes.
- Elections. If approved, the first town council elections would be held on the ordinary election day in 2028. Until then the shadow council is your current borough ward councillors.
- Boundaries. If you live in Wyman’s Brook, Benhall, The Reddings or the areas added to Leckhampton with Warden Hill, your parish would change on 1 April 2028. The maps are linked from the agenda.
- Having your say. The consultation is closed. The meeting is public, at the Municipal Offices on the Promenade at 2.30pm on 19 October.
If the vote passes, the council’s monitoring officer prepares a reorganisation order with published reasons and maps, and notifies the Secretary of State, the Local Government Boundary Commission for England, the Office for National Statistics, Ordnance Survey and the council’s auditors. We will report the result after the meeting.
Have your say