Staff shortages and a lack of available polling stations risk bringing chaos to May’s local elections in England, officials have warned, with concerns that some counts could take so long they contravene the law.
The dearth of staff is so acute that some councils are appealing for pandemic volunteers, who have delivered food parcels or helped at vaccination centres, to assist at polling stations on 6 May.
The Cabinet Office has confirmed it will push ahead with two sets of council elections – including one postponed from last May – as well as ballots for the London mayor and assembly, for a series of other mayors, and for police and crime commissioners (PCCs).
Scotland and Wales are holding elections on the same day for their parliaments, and for PCCs in Wales, which are organised separately.
An already complex set of votes has been made even more logistically fraught by the need for Covid-secure polling stations and limits on the numbers of people allowed at counts.
Laura Lock, the deputy chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA), said matters had been made more difficult by a government request earlier this month that schools not be closed for use as polling stations if possible, and by the requisitioning of many other venues as testing or vaccination centres.
Finding polling stations had become “really difficult”, Lock said. “Each week, people are telling us: ‘I’ve lost another station because of testing or vaccines.’ It’s just been constant. We’ve been raising this with the Cabinet Office, saying we need both arms of government to be pulling in the same direction.”
Members were also reporting big shortages of staff, Lock said, a problem compounded by the fact that many election workers and volunteers tended to be older and that even with the rapid vaccination programme, people were wary.
“My mum often works at polling stations, she’s had her first jab now, and will have had the second by the election,” Lock said. “But for, basically, the minimum wage, having spent 12 months avoiding everyone, do I want her to risk it? I’m not sure.”
Some councils, she said, were asking pandemic volunteers to help with election jobs that do not require training, such as managing queues.
There was a particular expectation that counts could be a lot slower, Lock said. By law, council elections need to be declared within four days of the vote, and there was a risk some returning officers – often council chief executives – could be held responsible if this does not happen.
Going beyond four days could be a breach of official duty, Lock said, but noted that the law stipulates returning officers have to make every reasonable effort to reach the deadline, which could allow for exceptional circumstances.
One source said council chief executives were aware of the issue and were likely to prioritise counts of council votes, as those for mayors and PCCs have a seven-day limit for completion. But it could mean some results coming a number of days after polls close.
The Cabinet Office is understood to be in contact with the AEA, particularly over the shortage of polling station venues.
After the Department for Education and Cabinet Office wrote to election officials and headteachers this month asking that schools not be used for polling stations if possible, to avoid further disrupting pupils’ education, the AEA said that in some cases this was too late, as polling cards – which give the location of the local polling station – had already been sent for printing.
Cat Smith MP, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said ministers had been “too slow to act, leaving everything until the last minute and forcing council workers to pick up the pieces”.
She added: “For months, Labour has been calling on the government to adapt and introduce safer voting methods, including voting over multiple days and all-postal voting. With less than three months until the election, ministers must answer serious concerns about the shortages of electoral staff, lack of venues, and finally publish a detailed plan about how these elections can run safely.”
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said the government had allocated extra resources for councils to cope with venue and staffing difficulties, and that while the hope was that schools would not be used for polling stations, there was a recognition that in some places there was no alternative.
