yourthurrock had plenty to say on election night and along with other media covering the count we were not impressed with the organisation. Thurrock was not alone . Some results in neighbouring Havering are at this time still undeclared. In the early hours of Friday morning we asked for a statement . Here is the reply……………..
Statement from Thurrock Council
Holding a General Election alongside a local election is always a demanding process. In Thurrock this was made even more difficult by having a split constituency which requires votes to be reconciled in Basildon and subsequently transferred to Thurrock. Voting results for the Parliamentary constituency of Thurrock were also sufficiently close to require a recount on two occasions.
Our overriding concern was to ensure that residents were given every opportunity to vote in Thurrock and the count was as accurate as possible.
Nevertheless we accept that the count could have been undertaken more quickly and we will be changing some of the arrangements for future elections in order to achieve a faster count while not compromising accuracy.
We believe the most significant factor which led to the delay was not starting the count until all ballot boxes were at the count location. While we and some authorities have adopted this practice in the past we believe we can considerably reduce the count time by redesigning this early part of the process.
Over the next few days we will be undertaking an overall assessment of what went right and what we need to improve. We will undertake a series of visits to other authorities to see how they managed their count and we will implement changes we believe to be necessary.
The decision to use only one ballot box for both the local and general election ballot papers was made by the returning officer after taking expert advice. Many other authorities, including a significant number which announced their results earlier than Thurrock, used a single ballot box. We do not believe that separating the two different types of ballot papers accounted for our delay.
