Delayed Lichfield election forms spell disaster for UKIPers.

Friday, April 29 2011

Two UKIP candidates say a series of council blunders resulted in their disqualification from standing in the Lichfield local elections.

Peter Cope and Trish Edwards, disqualified UKIP candidates in the Chadsmead and Boney Hay wards, say a catalogue of errors by Lichfield District Council produced a chain of delays, leading to a rush to submit registration forms and the disqualification for petty reasons.

UKIP prepared 10 local election candidates for Lichfield and at the council-organised candidates information day on March 16, Peter Cope, chairman of the UKIP Lichfield branch, formally requested forms.

He was informed by the Council that candidates would either need to collect their forms individually or have them posted to their home addresses and he requested the latter.

Three of the candidates received nothing and on March 31 Mr Cope was advised that the missing three nomination packs were available for collection, as they had not been posted as promised.

The April 4th completion deadline loomed nearer so he collected the forms that same day, but the Council gave him parish council nomination forms instead of the requested district council nomination forms. Again, that day he returned again and collected the correct forms.

All the signatures were collected and at 10am on April 4th, two hours before the deadline, the forms were handed in - checked by the Council and verbally confirmed as acceptable.

But out of the blue, with no previous advice and without explaining why, on April 7, the authority wrote to say two had been disqualified from the elections.

On enquiring it was explained that the misspelling of the party's name was the reason for the disqualification. In Mr Cope's case the letter 'Y' had been omitted from the word Party.

Hitting out at the disqualification of the pair, UKIP West Midlands MEP Mike Nattrass said: "The obvious intention of these candidates was to stand for UKIP. What happened to common sense? How can a missing "Y" disqualify a candidate who had his papers checked and accepted?

"This is petty and two hard working UKIP candidates have been blocked from the elections. Where is the democracy in that? Any correction should have been made when the form was checked and accepted.

"It appears that a series of Council errors led to this fiasco. Our candidates did everything they could to cope with the Council and they handed in their nomination forms a good two hours before the deadline. Those forms could have been amended there and then.