Agenda and minutes

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting. Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting. There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the last meeting held on 24 January 2018.

The minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 24 January 2018 be approved as a correct record.

This report sets out updates to the proposals for changes to Bracknell Forest’s polling districts and locations following a comprehensive review.

The Steering Group is asked to review the updates to the current arrangements and to formulate recommendations for changes to be effective from the publication of the revised register on 1 December 2018.  If an election were to be called prior to publication the existing polling districts and places would be used.

The Elections manager gave a review of the previous meeting where a number of recommendations had been approved. Officers reported back on areas which had been investigated further following the last meeting.

Binfield with Warfield – BA, BB, BC, WM

The following proposals were made for the Binfield area:

·         The ‘BA’ polling district would be separated into two new polling districts which would be made up of BAC and BI. (This was shown in the accompanying presentation on a map of Binfield in Orange/Blue)

·         There would be no changes to polling district ‘BB’ or ‘WM’.

·         Newbold College would become the designated polling place  for ‘BI’. It was reported that Newbold College was a good site in terms of elections facilities which could also absorb later growth in the area. As a result, it was proposed that there would be one extra polling station at Farley Wood rather than the two additional stations that  had previously been proposed.

·         Binfield Memorial Hall and Farley Wood Community Centre would continue to be used as polling stations for ‘BA’ and ‘BB’ respectively.

·         It was noted that these changes would result in a reduced number of electors voting  at Binfield Memorial Hall which would be more comfortably accommodated at the site.

The new arrangements for Binfield were discussed and pictures of the proposed Newbold College site were shown to the Steering Group. It was reported that the hall would have enough room for two polling stations. Questions were raised about car parking at the venue and it was confirmed there was ample parking and good facilities for staff. Newbold College were also very keen to play an active part in the community and have offered a reduced hire cost at a ‘community rate’ for polling day. Concerns were raised about access for voters with disabilities and access to disabled parking. In particular there were concerns about the length of the walk from the carpark.  It was asked that should a wheelchair be available at Newbold College, that it would be made available for electors who may need it.

College Town: SO

Officers revisited the secondary school in Sandhurst to investigate the longer term availability of The Spot however its future plans had yet to be confirmed. It was noted that Bracknell Town Council would not be taking on The Spot at present. It was noted that although the venue had not been discounted in the longer term, it couldn’t be used as a polling station in its current configuration and would be considered again in a future review once any changes had taken place.

It was proposed that the gym at Sandhurst Secondary School would be used as the polling station for the SO polling district. The school had reported that there were exams held in May/June each year which would require use of the gym and the dates won’t be confirmed until December what the position will be for the following May. In these situations it was noted that the polling station would revert  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

The next meeting was scheduled for May however it was confirmed that the report would be circulated prior to this and would only go ahead if necessary.