8 February 2021
Last year, the elections that were due to take place were postpned for a year. This means that there are a whole raft of elections taking place across the country on May 6th 2021 -some parish and town council elections, some district council elections, most county council elections, police and crime commissioner elections and in some areas, mayoral elections.
Obviously local democracy is very important and we do want elections to take place but only when it is safe to do so. Covid infection rates remain high in many areas and campaigning in the usual ways is currently, not possible. If the situation does not improve democracy cannot be seen to be happening as only parties who can afford to pay for leaflets to be delivered will reach all homes.
At the moment, if you are a pizza delivery company you can deliver leaflets yourself but if you are a political party, you cannot! As a party, we rely on volunteers to deliver our leaflets - this is no more dangerous than delivering pizza leaflets but it is not allowed. We need to be able to talk to our residents.
The election officers are desperately working out how they can keep everyone safe - from their polling station staff, who are often retired, to finding enough places to use as polling stations - will schools have spare space when they are trying to keep everyone distanced and the children are already struggling to keep up so really cannot afford more time off? - never mind the Count which is far from socially distanced even in large venues in normal times. The usual counting venue for Nuneaton and Bedworth is Bedworth Civic Hall, which is currently being used as a vaccination centre. More people will aslo be asking for postal votes which are more labour-intensive for the staff. There are so many difficulties a May 2021 date throws up that it would seem sensible to delay for a month or two until more people are vaccinated, infection rates should have dropped considerably and an election can be carried out more safely for all concerned.
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