Warwick District Council could be the latest authority to ask the government to pay back the costs incurred in working towards a currently-shelved council reshuffle.

Leading figures from the district's Conservative group have tabled a motion – a statement that becomes the will of the council if voted through – on local government reorganisation which will be heard during full council on Wednesday (September 30).

Not only does it ask senior officials to calculate Warwick District Council's full financial costs to date and for the cash to reimbursed, it also calls for sufficient time for the Boundary Commission for England to look at how the wards should be set up for any new council.

The government had decided to split Warwickshire into two new unitary authorities that would deal with all major council services, replacing the current county and district/borough model that splits services across two levels of local government.

Legal challenges led to a pause on the whole process being announced in early September, despite progress being made towards a new set up that would have seen a new unitary covering the Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon district patches.

On boundaries, it had already been announced that the new South Warwickshire council would have 56 elected officials based on the current county council geography with two councillors for each division, plus a third for Budbrooke & Bishop's Tachbrook and a third for Bidford & Welford due to their respective populations.

The motion, brought by Cllr Peter Phillips and supported by ex-council leader Cllr Andrew Day, notes that there is "no clear timetable for future decisions" despite councils already having "spent significant amounts of money and officer time preparing".

It asks all district councillors to agree "local residents should not be left to pick up the bill for a process which the government has now chosen to pause" and that "every pound unnecessarily spent is a pound which cannot be spent on the services our residents rely on".

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It adds: "It should be democratically elected local councils, in consultation with local residents, to decide on whether or not to put forward locally-led proposals for restructuring local government. It should not be imposed by Whitehall as a requirement for local government funding or devolution deals."

Motions are debated then decided via a simple majority vote. It is also possible for amendments to be brought forward in order to engender sufficient support.