I AM one of the people affected by the failure of Vale of White Horse District Council to deliver postal votes, and I find this saga, and the complacent attitude of the returning officer, David Buckle, scandalous.

Although ballots were supposed to be sent out “about 12 days before polling day” I was told that they had in fact only been sent out on Tuesday, April 28 – already three days late.

When they did not arrive, the returning officer patronisingly assured us that they would be delivered by Saturday.

This was false – many were never delivered.

Even had it been true it would have ignored the obvious fact that people may have postal votes because they are going to be away from home, and delivering on the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend is not good enough.

Having failed to send out the ballots on time, he then failed to act promptly to allow Oxford to re-issue the missing ballots, wasting a day “considering” this possibility.

Meanwhile his staff said they would deliver my ballot personally, but failed to do so.

He finally had the effrontery to declare: “As far as I can see our process for issuing postal ballots has been fine.” It appears he cannot see very far.

I would like to add that I did finally receive my ballot, in spite of the failures of Vale of White Horse, entirely thanks to the extremely helpful Mathew Metcalfe of Oxford City Council, who went out of his way to deliver the ballot in person.

Thank you Mathew.

ANTHONY HALL
Hayward Road
Oxford