Chief executive and monitoring officer suspended over running of election

Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council has suspended chief executive John Sellgren and head of audit and elections and monitoring officer Liz Dodd over failures in the running of the 2017 general election process.

Labour’s Paul Farrelly held the Newcastle-under-Lyme seat by 30 votes with 21,124 to his Conservative rival’s 21,094.

The suspension came after a review by Andrew Scallon, of the Association of Electoral Administrators, which found that more than 500 postal voters were disenfranchised, and close to 1,000 potential electors not included on the register.

His report was commissioned shortly after the election when claims were made that some students at Keele University and postal voters were unable to vote despite following the correct procedures.

Some said they were turned away from polling stations despite having polling cards with them, and others who said they had registered to vote by the deadline were turned away for not having provided extra information required.

Mr Scallon’s report said: “Human error and judgement and a lack of knowledge were responsible for the things that went wrong and led to the disenfranchisement of a significant number of people, raising questions about the mandate of the candidate declared elected as Newcastle-under-Lyme’s member of Parliament.”

He noted inadequate performance by Mr Sellgren (as acting returning officer/electoral registration officer) and consultants, worsened by a lack of experience among elections office staff and over-reliance on a software system, which was not properly managed.

Council leader Elizabeth Shenton said the difficulties had not been experienced in past elections.

“However, this review indicates a number of problems,” she said. “I sincerely apologise on behalf of the council for that situation but we can’t turn the clock back and right any wrongs which occurred at that time.”

Cllr Shenton said she would seek to ensure these failings could not be repeated but pointed out that politicians could not involve themselves in election administration.

Mr Scallon also urged the Government to change the rules under which election results may be challenged, which is limited to 21 days from the declaration unless corruption is alleged.

The council is to discuss the report at an extraordinary meeting next week.

Mark Smulian