10 May 2019
Dear parent/guardian
Re: Polling Day
I am delighted to announce that after long negotiation and deliberation I have today made the decision for the school to remain open to pupils on polling day, Thursday 23rd May. I sincerely apologise that I have not been able to advise you until now. These things take some time, and we had a duty to advise you of the date initially in order for you to have sufficient notice. To make things more difficult, we were only advised of the date of the election on our first day back after the Easter break, which gave us very little time to make suitable enquiries with the Local Authority Health and Safety team and the Electoral office.
However, it was always my intention to try to make things work, in order for your child/children’s learning to have the least disruption.
We have been discussing the use of the school as a polling station for some time now and over the past 2-3 years there have been several measures put in place to ensure that health and safety risks are minimised such as new fencing and CCTV. Two years ago attempts were made to open the school to pupils by moving the polling stations to the Community Rooms from the school hall, however, without the fencing, lockable gates and CCTV this was not possible.
Can I thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter. I will be sending out some important Health and Safety notices closer to the time with instructions for keeping yourselves and our pupils safe on polling day. I would be very grateful if you would read these thoroughly and follow any instructions given, so that we can continue to keep the school open to pupils in future when there are elections.
I have also been working for some time to try to find an alternative location for the polling station, however, none of the locations suggested have been suitable. Both suggestions so far have been the Church community centre, which is already used, and the community centre on Gors Avenue which is not possible. If you have any other suggestions then please let me know and I can forward them to the electoral office. If we make a request for change then responsibility lies with us as school to find an alternative when making that request.
Should you have any further queries or wish for any further detail as to the process we have to follow, then please contact me personally and I will be more than happy to see you,
Many thanks,
Fiona Gibbard
Head teacher