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Petition to the Isle of Wight Council to hold a referendum for the elected Mayor

1. As you will know, the Council has been presented with a petition asking for a Referendum for an elected mayor. There are generally two circumstances in which a Referendum for an Elected Mayor can be required –

a) If the Council receives 5288 signatures in the form of a petition; or
b) If the Council decides to call a Referendum itself if it is satisfied there is sufficient support for it.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister can also require an authority to hold a referendum in some circumstances but I don’t believe these apply in this case and so I won’t dwell on this point.

2. If a Petition is to be presented to the Council asking for a referendum, then there are a number of requirements which must be met. These are set out in detailed Regulations which have been made by the Government taken together with guidance issued by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

3. Those Regulations and guidance require that -

a. The Petition must be signed by people who are on the Electoral Roll for the Isle of Wight at the date the petition is delivered;
b. Each person who signs the petition must show their full name and address; and
c. The signatures must be collected within a 12 month period.

4. This means that, in verifying the petition, we are obliged to disregard –

a) any entry where the person’s name does not appear on the electoral register.
b) any signature which is illegible;
c) any entry which has not been signed;
d) any duplicate signatures; and
e) any entry which does not show the full name and address of the person;

5. Upon receipt of the Petition on 14 October, the Council proceeded to verify the signatures under the scrutiny of the Vice Chairman of the Standards Committee. Details of that procedure can be made available to anyone who would like it.

6. It was apparent upon receipt of the Petition that a large number of the entries did not include a first name as required by the Regulations. As this meant that those names should potentially be excluded, the Council have referred to the guidance from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and have also taken Counsel’s advice. The clear message from that guidance and supported by the advice from Counsel is that unless the full first and Surname is included on the Petition, then the entry must be excluded. The legal advice I have received is that in these issues the Returning Officer does not have any discretion and is obliged to disregard such entries.

7. Upon verification, the results are as follows –

a. The Petition contained 5891 signatures in total

b. Upon scrutiny, verification has excluded 1,457 as not being on the electoral register

c. A further 34 have been excluded either because the signature was not legible or for other reasons the person signing could not be identified on the register

d. A further 40 have been excluded as they had not been signed

e. 5 entries have been excluded because they are duplicated elsewhere on the petition

f. Of the remaining entries, 3331 are of people who can be identified on the register but their signature is invalid because their complete name has not been included on the petition

g. The result is this that there are 1024 entries which qualify for the purposes of the petition. This means that there are insufficient numbers of valid signatures to satisfy the statutory requirements and to automatically trigger a Referendum.

8. I referred at the start to the two ways in which a petition could be triggered. The first is if the petition has sufficient signatures and I have explained the result of that analysis. The second is if the Council decides to call a referendum itself.

The Council will now need to consider this question. In considering whether it wishes to call a referendum, the Council will consider the results of the Petition and will assess the extent to which support has been expressed for a Referendum. I intend to report on this to the next meeting of the Council on 17 November. I am also required to report on the petition to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and to insert an advert in the local press and this will be done in the near future.

MJA Fisher
Returning Officer
27th October 2004