Council boss to keep role despite postal vote error

A council chief says he will not resign from his role after 2,600 postal votes were not sent out in time for the general election.

Uttlesford District Council apologised for "human error" which meant those living in the Chelmsford areas of the North West Essex constituency faced delays.

When asked in June if he would consider quitting the £124,000 a year job after the mistake, Peter Holt, the council's chief executive, answered: "Honestly, yes."

However, Mr Holt revealed on Tuesday that he changed his mind having "almost entirely fixed" the situation.

Council staff delivered ballots by hand in an emergency effort to ensure affected residents could vote.

However, 612 people who applied for a postal ballot did not subsequently cast their vote, Mr Holt said.

"The reality is every single election when we send out postal votes, only about three-quarters of the people send them back," he claimed.

The council chief said despite having "absolutely considered" his position, he no longer intended to resign.

"If I’d been sitting with you here today, talking about hundreds or thousands of votes not having gone out and successfully come back then I’d be toast - and quite rightly too," he told BBC Essex.

"Instead, I'm relieved and chastened and honestly so grateful to my colleagues for all of the hard work they did on top of their day jobs to make sure that, having spotted this problem, we almost entirely fixed it."

Mr Holt said any missing votes "could not possibly" have affected the 2,610 majority won by Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch.

Following the issue, council leader Petrina Lees commissioned an independent review of what happened.

"It is important that we take an oversight role to ensure that the issue in the last couple of weeks is understood, with learning from it applied in future," said Ms Lees, of the Residents for Uttlesford Group.

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