Royal Mail criticised for failing to deliver postal votes before election

There were warnings from senior election officials as early as last year that the electoral system would be unable to cope with increasing demand for postal voting.

In a review of the May 2023 local elections, the  Association of Electoral Administrators, which represents returning officers, who are responsible for making sure elections run smoothly, warned about problems with postal votes.

Many returning officers were having to deal with delivery problems, the report said, and “significant numbers” of voters had not received their ballots, which caused “upset”.

Its chief executive, Peter Stanyon, said: “It’s symptomatic of the challenge of delivering postal votes in a very constrained timetable.

“It is getting harder and harder and this time round we are expecting in the region of 10 million postal votes to have been issued for the general election.  That is up by more than 1.5 million on the last time around, which was a winter election.”

The Electoral Commission told The Telegraph last week that problems with the postal voting system would be included in its post-election review.