A South London council missed more than 6,500 votes from the declaration of the general election result in one constituency due to a ‘spreadsheet issue’. Labour MP Fleur Anderson held the Putney seat on July 4, with what was announced on the night as 20,952 votes compared to Conservative Lee Roberts’ total of 10,011.
But Wandsworth Council has now revealed it mistakenly failed to include 6,588 votes in the totals it announced for the candidates on the night. The figures have been updated on the authority’s website, and show Ms Anderson still holds the seat with a bigger majority of 12,488 votes.
Ms Anderson received 24,113 votes on the night, while Mr Roberts received 11,625. Lib Dem candidate Kieren McCarthy saw his total rise from 5,189 votes to 5,943.
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Wandsworth Conservatives demanded an explanation from the council after spotting the results had been quietly changed on the council website. The council later posted a statement on its website, which read: “We acknowledge a spreadsheet issue that resulted in not all the properly counted and allocated votes being included in the announcement on the night in the Putney election count for the general election 2024.
“This was identified and the figures on this page have been updated. This did not affect the result or the order of the candidates. While we are confident this was an isolated incident we are taking this opportunity to review processes with a particular focus on spreadsheet procedures.”
Councillor Aled Richard-Jones, leader of Wandsworth Conservatives, said residents ‘deserve urgent clarification’ on the cause of the error, why it was not detected at the time and the steps the council is taking to make sure it never happens again.
He said: “Previous elections in Wandsworth have been won by a handful of votes – three years ago, a by-election in Tooting was won by a single vote, demonstrating how important it is that every vote is counted. Yet this week, the council tried to sneak out the fact that 6,558 votes essentially went missing during the counting process, without giving Wandsworth residents a proper explanation of how this could have happened.
“The Labour administration then silenced opposition Conservative councillors’ legitimate questions by blocking discussion of this issue at last night’s scrutiny committee meeting. The secrecy needs to stop, and the council needs to explain itself. At a time when trust in democracy needs to be strengthened, the council is severely undermining that trust in Wandsworth.”
Ms Anderson, who has been the MP for Putney since 2019, said she will continue to serve all residents across the constituency. She added: “I have been informed that the declaration of result for Putney at the general election has been updated after a clerical error came to light. I have been informed of the reasons for these errors in the process.” She did not publicly share the reasons for the error.
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