Wirral Council ban Leonora and John Brace from attendance at Claughton byelection count!
Updated I asked the Combined Authority Returning Officer Ged Fitzgerald for a decision after I received Wirral’s response but he wrote no too.
Despite attending election counts many times in the past, Wirral Council has banned us from both the Claughton byelection count, Metro Mayoral count and General Election Count.
As far as I have been told by Wirral Council as there are no other press requests to attend the Wirral Claughton byelection count and the Wirral Metro Mayor count that means for the first time in many years no press will be covering the count on the Wirral.
Below is a copy of the email from Kevin McCallum received today. Apparently we’re not organised enough (or maybe it is connected to this article I published this morning)!
This is of course ironic as within the last hour I was praising Wirral Council’s conduct of the election to this point. Perhaps I need to rewrite that!
from: MacCallum, Kevin <kevinmaccallum@wirral.gov.uk>
to: “john@johnbrace.com” <john@johnbrace.com>
date: 3 May 2017 at 10:29
subject: Media Accreditation
mailed-by: wirral.gov.uk
Dear Mr Brace,
Thank you for your request for media accreditation for the LCR Mayoral Election Count and the General Election Count.
The Local Returning Officer has considered your request and has refused it.
Media accreditation is only provided to media professionals who represent bona fide media organisations, which is a criteria you unfortunately do not meet.
This criteria is necessary to ensure the effective and timely management of the verification and count and relevant procedures/processes.
Yours sincerely,
Kev MacCallum
Head of Communications
Communications & Marketing
E: kevinmaccallum@wirral.gov.uk
W: www.wirral.gov.uk & www.wirralview.com
In the interests of completeness I emailed Kevin back just to clarify this covered the Claughton byelection too as it wasn’t explicitly mentioned, I’m therefore including his reply below to that email too.
from: MacCallum, Kevin <kevinmaccallum@wirral.gov.uk>
to: John Brace <john@johnbrace.com>
date: 3 May 2017 at 11:24
subject: Re: Media Accreditation
mailed-by: wirral.gov.uk
Dear Mr Brace
Apologies, the refusal of accreditation also refers to the Claughton by-election.
Kev MacCallum
Head of Communications
If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.