Postal votes had to be hand delivered across the Maldon district at general election due to blunder

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POSTAL votes for the general election had to be delivered by hand after a blunder saw more than a 100 go undelivered across Maldon.

A report which will go before Maldon District Council’s overview and scrutiny committee revealed Royal Mail failed to deliver more than 100 postal vote packs.

These had to be spoiled, new postal votes created and then officers deliver the new votes by hand.

The council described it as a “significant use of limited resources”.

The report also revealed 22 duplicate postal votes were created and delivered by the printers after an error.

It said: “We immediately hand delivered letters to each resident giving them clear instructions on how to vote in the event that they received two postal packs.”

The issues have been revealed as part of a review of the county council and general elections held earlier this year.

As part of the review eight areas of improvement have been identified.

These include issues surrounding annual leave taken before elections, delays in the verification and the counts and staff being unoccupied during the count.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We are not aware that Maldon District Council has raised any concerns with Royal Mail about the non-delivery of ballot packs for the 2017 General Election.

“If it does, we will investigate as a matter of urgency.”

A spokesperson for the council said: “The council has asked Royal Mail to launch an investigation into the non-delivery of some postal votes during the last parliamentary election and we are currently assisting them with the information they have requested.

“The council’s elections team had to re-issue and hand deliver replacement postal votes to ensure that no electors were prevented from voting in the election.

“We look forward to their findings as we need to be confident that we have a reliable delivery service for such important elections material, as issues such as these are both time consuming and costly to the council”.

Council chief executive, Fiona Marshall, added: “The action plan has identified a number areas of learning which had been acquired from the previous elections and the majority of these actions have already been implemented.

“We are satisfied that we have robust processes in place in which to deliver elections in the future.”

Councillors were set to approve the plan at a meeting last night.