MUCH of the debate at the council meeting on Wednesday about Individual Elector Registration concentrated on the wish to get more people to register to vote.

That is not what the IER legislation and process is about.

It is about checking whether or not people who are already on the Register and whose names have rolled over from one year to the next still actually exist.

This has been done by checking every name and address against databases held by the DWP, NI numbers, Council tax and the like to see if they are known by any of these agencies.

As it stands, there are 17,498 people on the register who Election Officers are unable to verify by the above means. These people may have died, moved away or abroad or never existed in the first place. Unless they can be ‘verified’ by December this year, then all these people will be removed from the register.

Only Councillor Hornby referred to this in the debate. He also noted that in Great Lever one in seven names (14%) are unverified – similarly in Halliwell and Rumworth. This compares with just 5% in Bradshaw.

The prospect of not having these votes available to them in the 2016 local elections has obviously rattled the Labour Group hence their wish that the removals shouldn’t take place till December 2016.

Apart from Cllr Hornby’s contribution, the whole debate was an exercise in missing the point.

Cllr Paul Richardson

Ripon Close

Little Lever