A backbench councillor has suggested getting rid of a third of councillors to cut spending by more than £150,000 – a move other authorities elsewhere have already made.

Harrow Council has three members for each of the borough’s 21 wards but Councillor Stanley Sheinwald (UKIP), ward councillor for Hatch End, says the authority could comfortably do away with one per ward and that his idea is plausible.

Each councillor can claim an annual allowance of £8,106 – and even more if they have more responsibilities – and so the potential minimum yearly saving is £171,360.

“I think it should be given serious consideration and I think the public would support it if we saved that sort of money,” said Mr Sheinwald, a former Conservative and Independent.

“We don’t need three councillors per ward – I think the council would work with just 42 councillors. Council leader Susan Hall has proposed cutting the chief executive out but we’re not culling where it really needs it.

“Don’t forget, she’s cut the number of committee meetings so there’s less work for councillors to do and all they have left is casework, and that’s quite easy as most of it is done by email nowadays.”

Mr Sheinwald said his proposal comes against a backdrop of an extra £25million of cuts likely as a result of April’s upcoming local government settlement to the council.

A spokesman for The Local Government Boundary Commission for England said: “The only way you can change the number of councillors is through a review carried out by us.

“We’re independent of the government and once we’ve carried out a review we draft an order of our recommended changes that’s laid in both houses of Parliament, so Parliament scrutinises it rather than the secretary of state, and we’ve never had our recommendations rejected.”

The commission carries out 25 to 30 electoral reviews a year, some at the invitation of authorities seeking to downscale.

The spokesman said, for example, Hambleton District Council in North Yorkshire will reduce in size at this year’s local elections from 44 councillors to 28, and Northamptonshire County Council shed 16 councillors in 2013.

The spokesman said: “In the majority of reviews we have reduced council sizes and most of these have been proposed by the council itself, and it requires a complete redrawing of the ward boundaries. I can tell you we have no current plans to carry out a review in Harrow.”

The last electoral review of Harrow was conducted in 1998.