Chaotic scenes in Barnet as voting system fails on day of London mayoral elections

Voters urged to bring polling cards as glitch with electoral roll leads to people being turned away

Barnet Council has apologised for failures in its electoral system that have led to voters being turned away from polling booths on the day of the London mayoral elections.

"Please can voters unable to vote this morning return to their polling station later if possible. We apologise for these problems," a spokesperson for the north London council tweeted, this morning.

"We are aware of problems with voting registers at our polling stations. This is being resolved. Please take voting cards with you," they added.

"This morning I was nearly turned away from a polling station," said Computing's publisher and Barnet resident Tom Wright.

"I've never brought along my polling card. Today, Barnet have listed Christelle Rogy as resident at my address. My wife is also not listed. They had to call through to the council to check me against council tax. And they are having to make hand written notes of name and address."

Even councillors have been unable to cast their votes, with reports that Barnet Council cabinet member Dean Cohen was turned away from voting in Golders Green.

At this point the exact cause of the glitch is not known, but Barnet council is no stranger to controversy as a result of its "outsource first" policy, which has seen many of its core service handed over to Capita.

In 2012 the Conservative-run council awarded a 10-year £320m contract to the outsourcing giant to run a wide range of council services, including the call centre, human resources and IT. More than 400 jobs were transferred to the private-sector firm or lost in redundancies.

Barnet is not the only council in the news over electoral controversy today. Bradford City Council has asked the West Yorkshire Police to investigate allegations of electoral fraud.

Computing has contacted Barnet Council for comment.

Update

A Capita spokesperson has said that while the company operates a call centre to handle enquiries in relation to the electoral system in Barnet and is involved in administering postal and proxy voting it was not responsible for the problems detailed in this article.