Flood Victims Disenfranchised?

9.28.16pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 14th Dec 2007

Some flood victims who were forced to evacuate their homes and live temporarily elsewhere may be about to miss out on the chance to vote for the area in which they usually live. They include victims in Thatcham Central and Thatcham North, where Town Council by-elections will take place on January 10th.

The information came out in reply to a question from Councillor David Rendel at last night's meeting of West Berkshire Council's Executive. The leader of the Council, Graham Jones said that the Council had decided that flood victims would be encouraged to register both at their original addresses and at the address where there were temporarily living. However he also revealed that no attempt had been made to contact any evacuees still registered in the two Thatcham Wards to see if they needed postal votes.

"With only a few days to go until the cut-off date for applying for postal votes, it is now very urgent that these flood victims should be offered the chance to vote by post", commented Councillor Rendel. "You really cannot expect elderly voters who have been sent to live temporarily in, say, Newbury, to make their way back to Thatcham to vote in the middle of winter. With the sort of weather we are having at present, not to offer these people postal votes is effectively to disenfranchise them. The Conservatives should have realized this long before now and done something about it."