WEYMOUTH councillors voted unanimously in favour of using more gender-neutral language to refer to councillors and council officers in a move which took approximately "five seconds" to implement".

The word "chairman" has been updated to "chairperson" in the council's standing orders and language referring to the chairperson as "he", "him" and "his" has been changed to "they", "them" and "their".

Standing orders are the written rules of a local council and are essential to regulate the proceedings of a meeting.

Councillors and council staff must ensure they are followed and complied with at all times.

At a meeting of the full council on Wednesday, February 21, the recommendations, which were previously approved by the finance and governance committee, were put to all councillors.

Cllr Ryan Hope hit back at scrutiny of the changes from residents after concerns were previously raised about the costs of making the change.

He said: "There has been a lot of scrutiny about this by members of the public about wasting a lot of money changing this.

"I just wanted to ask the town clerk how quickly she managed to replace the word chairman with chairperson, was it a simple Ctrl F and replace all?

Jane Biscombe, Weymouth Town Clerk responded: "It was approximately five seconds."

The recommendations to make the changes were approved unanimously by councillors.