FEARS have been raised that a large number of residents living in an area of Wilton will not vote in the local elections next month because their usual polling station has been moved up to a mile away.

Voters in Bulbridge usually attend a polling station set up at the Wilton and Barford Primary School but due to ongoing building work it is not available and more than 500 living in the area will instead have to go to Wilton Community Centre.

Ward councillor Peter Edge says the change in location has not been publicised at all and the first indication of the change was simply when polling cards were delivered.

Urging voters to check their cards, he said: “It’s quite possible that most people will not have looked at their polling cards and realised they have to go somewhere different to vote.

"They will simply assume the polling station is the same place as always and it will not be until election day that they go to vote and then see they have to go into town.

“Some people are infirm, disabled or quite elderly – they may have been able to go 200 yards across the road but they are not likely to get a bus.

“It will almost certainly disenfranchise large numbers of voters from this area.”

In an email responding to Cllr Edge’s concerns, Wiltshire Council’s Carlton Brand said despite the last-minute change, voters would have had “ample time” to plan how to attend the polling station.

He said: “At the time of sending the provisional booking letters, the school headteacher rang to say they were having building works undertaken and it meant that all classrooms were being used so no spare capacity would be available at the time of election.

“This was the first we knew of this, and the poll card data was sent to the printers on March 13, so a very hasty change had to be made.”

He said voters had four weeks’ notice of the change.