At the August council meeting later in the month, Mr Kneipp will vote on his own recommendation. From there, a request will be submitted to Local Government Minister Paul Toole for a new name to be proclaimed.

If approved, it will take about six to eight weeks to officially change.

One of the main factors behind the name change was due to the recognition Dubbo has as a brand, the administrator said.

Mr Kneipp said Dubbo was in the top three regionally recognised places in NSW.

“It’s just too valuable a tool not to be included in the name. And Wellington will benefit off the back of Dubbo’s brand,” Mr Kneipp said.

He admitted there would be “a little bit of pain” that neither ‘Wellington’ nor ‘Macquarie’ were included.

With the Macquarie River running through other councils, and names such as Port Macquarie and Lake Macquarie, Mr Kneipp said it would have been too confusing including ‘Macquarie’.

It’ll be the second name change for Dubbo and Wellington local government areas, however Mr Kneipp said money had not been wasted.

“From day one I said to staff ‘I don’t want to spend a single cent on re-branding because we’re going to the public’. The logo was changed electronically, but we didn’t erect new signage or change uniforms. We’ve not spent a single cent,” he said.

The research conducted by Aurora found less than 40 per cent of respondents were satisfied with the council name, and only one third of those who took part in Dubbo MP Troy Grant’s survey wanted the name to stay.

“I think what I’ve done it made a decision on the prosperity of Dubbo and Wellington, rather than looking at sentimentality and history,” Mr Kneipp said.