Uttlesford DC chief keeping job postal vote error

The council chief said despite having “absolutely considered” his position, he no longer intended to resign.

“If I’d been sitting with you here today, talking about hundreds or thousands of votes not having gone out and successfully come back then I’d be toast – and quite rightly too,” he told BBC Essex.

“Instead, I’m relieved and chastened and honestly so grateful to my colleagues for all of the hard work they did on top of their day jobs to make sure that, having spotted this problem, we almost entirely fixed it.”

Mr Holt said any missing votes “could not possibly” have affected the 2,610 majority won by Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch.

Following the issue, council leader Petrina Lees commissioned an independent review of what happened.

“It is important that we take an oversight role to ensure that the issue in the last couple of weeks is understood, with learning from it applied in future,” said Ms Lees, of the Residents for Uttlesford Group.