Councils monitoring potential coronavirus impact on May elections in Northamptonshire

Residents are scheduled to head to the polling booths on Thursday May 7 to vote for candidates for the new West Northamptonshire Council unitary authority that is set to be formed in April next year.

They will also cast votes for the Police and Crime Commissioner, and for any local parish or town council candidates.

But the growing numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK has led some councillors to question how this could affect the vote in two months’ time.

Speaking at a full Northampton Borough Council meeting on Monday (March 9), Conservative councillor Chris Malpas said one elderly resident he had spoken to was ‘worried’ and asked council leader Jonathan Nunn whether any special preparations were being made for the elections.

Councillor Nunn responded: “There are risks, whether it’s sharing pencils or gathering in buildings. Local elections are also dependent on people wanting to volunteer. All these things are in the risk category.

“There’s no government or LGA advice on this but we know they are alive to this. If there’s significant risk though a more cautious approach will be taken to make sure nobody is put at risk.”

According to the Guardian, government lawyers have been assessing the possibility of delaying the elections if the outbreak continues to escalate. If it reaches such a stage, it would be the first time since the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak that local elections would be delayed nationally.

Recent votes have been delayed in Northamptonshire though. The local elections scheduled for last summer were postponed by the government pending a decision being made on the local reorganisation, while this year elections will purely focus on the new unitary council.

It means that the vast majority of members of Northampton Borough Council will have served an additional two years on top of the four-year term they were elected to in the last vote in 2015.

An Electoral Commission spokesman said: “The Commission and the electoral community are working hard to ensure that the scheduled May elections can go ahead as planned, as well as monitoring the developing issue of the coronavirus and its potential impact.

“Any changes to the date of May’s polls would be a matter for the UK Government and Parliament. In the event of any changes to the date, we would work with the electoral community to minimise any potential disruption.”

And a spokesperson for Northamptonshire County Council added: “We are following national guidance and at the moment no decisions have been made nationally regarding elections.”

So far 26,261 people have been tested in the UK, of which 25,888 were confirmed negative and 373 were confirmed as positive. Six patients who tested positive for COVID-19 have died.

In a speech on Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson added: “We remain in the contain phase of the outbreak, but watching what is happening around the world, our scientists think containment is extremely unlikely to work on its own, and that is why we are making extensive preparations for a move to the delay phase.

“We are preparing various actions to slow the spread of this disease in order to reduce the strain it places on the NHS. The more we can delay the peak of the spread to the summer, the better the NHS will be able to manage.”