Swansea Council

refer to your letter dated 12 October 2007, addressed to the Leader of our Council.

I am contacting you as Electoral Services Officer for this authority. Here at Swansea we are continually reviewing our polling stations with an aim to making venues as accessible as possible.

We have had a rolling programme to buy in portable hearing loop systems and now all polling stations are furnished on polling day with one of these systems.

We acknowledge that not all our polling stations are accessible by those electors who may experience walking difficulties as in deed parents with push chairs, however we can identify these stations and we always write to every household affected by these venues (in addition to the poll card and prior to the poll card being sent) and inform electors of the difficulties of the station and invite them to consider the postal or proxy vote system as an alternative way of voting.

We also use a number of mobile caravans (13 in total), this is either because there is no suitable venue to accommodate that polling district or we have been asked to provide additional facilities where it has been identified that people have quite a distance to go to vote. Mobile caravans often have to be jacked up as the land is uneven, hence the gradient of the ramp then becomes an issue.

All our election staff are given training, included in this training is making them aware of the elector's needs such as making sure that parking is allocated outside, gates are left open, doors into venue and polling room are left wide open at all times, lights on for the visually impaired, mats and other hindrances are removed from entrance. The staff are told to visit the station before hand and look for an alternative entrance/room that would be more accessible and to always put seating out in case electors need to sit down.

It is very difficult to say how many polling stations are accessible. I have a number which I could say are accessible but on walking to the station I note that there are no dropped kerbs, so an elector in a wheelchair would have great difficulty - is it fair to say that your polling station is then accessible as you assume that all electors will arrive in a car?

I hope this helps, if you require any further information, do not hesitate to contact me.

Amanda Bebb

Electoral Services Officer

Tele: 01792-636042