Last week's elections in Wyre Forest generally ran very smoothly. The elections saw for the first time the requirement for photo ID to be used in all elections being held in Great Britain (although the only polls were in England).

There were problems with recruiting staff to work in polling stations and then having several of them drop out in the days before 4 May. The plan to have an extra poll clerk at each polling station to act as a ‘greeter’ and ask voters on arrival if they had photo ID with them wasn’t quite fulfilled – there was a handful of polling stations where we were unable to fill that role.