Ministers will this year push for changes to be made to the functioning of the European court of human rights or could defy the more controversial of its rulings that have included the decision to give prisoners the vote.

Britain has recently taken over control of the Strasbourg based court that rules on human rights within its 47 member states but which pitched itself into conflict with the British parliament this year by ruling that inmates in British prisons must be allowed to vote, despite MPs voting overwhelmingly to continue to deny prisoners the right to vote.

The UK holds this position until May and both parties in the coalition are keen to use the time to propose reforms to the body with pro-Europeans as much as eurosceptics believing its practices need overhauling.

In a document written by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for circulation among member countries and given to a Sunday newspaper, the government has warned the 47 signatories to the international body that it must reform to "address growing public and political concern" and desist from ruling on issues "that do not need to be dealt with at the European level".

If the signatories do not endorse the British government's plans, the Sunday Times reported the document contained a warning Britain could decide to go it alone and ignore controversial rulings.

The issue of prisoner voting is particularly acute because the court's recent rulings on the issue appear to suggest scant opportunity to compromise - such as the introduction of voting rights for a limited number of prisoners serving very short sentences. A further appeal is imminent.

The government has become increasingly frustrated at the ECHR, including normally more pro-European members such as the justice secretary Ken Clarke and Lib Dems, at the extent to which it has interfered in national policy and overruled decisions taken by British courts.

Now the UK has formed an alliance with Switzerland, where voters support their government's intention to deport foreign criminals regardless of the stance adopted by the ECHR.

In the memo, written by both the FCO and the Swiss, the court and the European Convention on Human Rights are warned they falling into disrepute because of the huge backlog of cases and the proclivity of Strasbourg judges to interfere in national cases.

It reads: "Urgent action is needed in order to avoid further damage to the reputation and effectiveness of the convention system".

The justice secretary Ken Clarke has long warned that the ECHR has a backlog of 160,000 cases and the FCO document now describes many of those cases as "hopeless". The court, it suggests, is increasingly being used as a last resort by desperate claimants whose cases have rightly been thrown out in their home country.

"The circumstances in which the European Court of Human Rights should need to reconsider the case and substitute its own view for that of the national court should be relatively limited," the document states.

Judges in Strasbourg should adopt a broader "hands off" approach, it says, adding: "There is no reason why this approach should be limited to asylum and immigration matters."

The blueprint has been submitted to an intergovernmental committee of Council of Europe representatives who have agreed in principle to make substantial reforms to the court.