Council chief forfeits election fee after Hackney poll chaos
Tim Shields, acting returning officer and Chief Executive of Hackney Council
Following the publication today of a damning report by the Electoral Commission, the UK’s elections watchdog, Hackney Council has confirmed that acting returning officer and Chief Executive Tim Shields will be waiving the fee he was due to receive in payment for organising the polls.
The fee would have been an additional payment made on top of Mr Shields’s usual salary. According to the 2010 Town Hall Rich List, Mr Shields’s 2008-2009 salary was £117, 956.
Mr Shields follows John Mothersole, the returning officer for Sheffield Hallam parliamentary constituency who announced earlier this month that he would not be taking his expected fee of £20,000 for organising the elections there. As in Hackney, Sheffield was dogged by chaos at polling stations with some voters unable to cast their ballots.
Tim Shields, acting returning officer, said, “I welcome the Electoral Commission’s report which highlights some of the changes that need to be made to the electoral system nationally.
“There were a number of problems in Hackney on polling day for which I have unreservedly apologised to our residents, and which is why I’ve made the decision to waive my acting returning officer’s fee. I will ask the Council to invest it into a facility for the community.
“In addition to this, I have commissioned a full independent report into what happened here, which will go into much more detail than the Electoral Commission’s report about our local circumstances and help us ensure nothing like this ever happens again in Hackney.”
Hackney was the last London borough to its announce parliamentary election results, and the Council’s organisation of the electoral process has been condemned by both re-elected MPs, Meg Hillier and Diane Abbott, who have described it as ‘an embarrassment’.
Previous story: Watchdog condemns Hackney election chaos
There is more for the acting returning officer, Mr Tim Shields to consider, besides waiving his parliamentary election fee, as he has done over the debacle at several polling stations whereby a number of electors were prevented from registering their votes.
Mr Shields might benefit from some training in making official declarations of the poll and to help him to recognise the impartiality of the office of acting returning officer. At the count in Hackney Town Hall, his announcements of the results for the Hackney Council wards, in particular, were not well delivered. Once he fluffed his lines and said “I elect…”, a slip suggesting he didn’t really understand his own role in the proceedings. He did not assemble the candidates behind him, as is usual when making a declaration. Admittedly, not all the candidates were present when their results were announced, as they should have been and as the acting returning officer ought to have reminded their agents. More disturbing still was his apparently addressing the grouped Labour supporters in the room, who included the re-elected Mayor and seeming to share their triumph in an inappropriate and partisan manner.