Bristol councillors vote for new election committee

By The Editor
Jul 28, 2010

Bristol city councillors have voted in favour of setting up a new committee to try to stop a repeat of the errors in the run up to this year’s elections.

The council was heavily criticised in a report this month which analysed problems in the run-up to the general and local elections in the city.

Lessons had been learned, said council chief executive Jan Ormondroyd, after thousands of postal voters in Bristol West received papers meant for Bristol East and ballot papers were found in the wrong box, delaying results.

Nearly 16,000 phone calls to Bristol City Council went unanswered in the 12-week run-up to election day in May.

Overworked staff were unable to cope with the calls from the public, but they failed to answer more than half of them.

Yet council managers were told five years previously “there was insufficient staff to deal with all the calls”.

Communication failure and human error were amongst the faults identified in the study commissioned by the council and conducted by independent consultant Gill Dixon, with input from the Electoral Commission.

The new elections committee will oversee the implementation of 36 recommendations made in the report, which included:

• Establishment of a cross party Elections Committee so members can monitor, overview and scrutinise the work of the Returning Officer and Electoral Services;
• Improved customer service, in particular the way telephone enquiries are handled, so that 90% of telephone calls at peak times are answered;
• Strengthen monitoring of poll card and postal vote printing and delivery.