EXPATS could have been among hundreds denied a say in the EU referendum, it has emerged.

Castle Point Council had to send a second batch of 144 postal votes to its overseas voters as late as Thursday, June 9 after it emerged the initial haul had not been delivered – despite Royal Mail receiving them as early as Wednesday, May 25.

But Ann Horgan, the council’s head of governance, said the authority also offered emergency proxy voting to electors living within the borough- without any problems.

She added that 106 votes were successfully returned from overseas to be counted in the referendum.

This suggests 38 Castle Point expats may have been unable to have their say in the historic poll.

She said: “To put this into context, at the same time as these electors’ postal votes were collected by Royal Mail on May 25, there were more than a thousand postal votes for Castle Point in the mail system and the majority of these were delivered with no problems whatsoever.

“However, it then became apparent there were issues concerning delivery of those overseas postal votes by June 9.

“We still have not had any explanation from Royal Mail as to what happened, whether this was a Royal Mail problem or a problem with delivery in the electors’ countries of residence.

“It highlights once again that for overseas electors, the safest way of ensuring they can take part in a referendum or election is to appoint a proxy to vote on their behalf.”

Sally Hopkins, spokesman for Royal Mail, denied there were issues delivering voting packs.

She said: “We can confirm that all postal voting packs passed to Royal Mail by printers and local authorities are processed as soon as we receive them.

“There were no issues in our network on the days when Castle Point’s printers handed their mail to us at the end of May.

“We were aware that Castle Point Council re-issued postal voting packs to overseas voters in early June after the local authority was contacted by some people claiming not to have received them.

“We handled overseas postal votes from around the world, so the process and timing for delivering these back to local authorities in the UK in time for the count worked well.

“We know that many overseas voters returned their postal votes to Castle Point Council in time to be included in the count.”

Echo:

Were you unable to vote in the referendum?

If so, contact paul.nizinskyj@nqe.com or call 01268 469421.