A SENIOR Oxford City Council official left 200 polling cards in a bag on a wall — and did not tell his bosses when he discovered they were missing.

The error by electoral services manager Martin John was revealed in a council report following June’s county council and European elections, when hundreds of polling cards disappeared.

Last night, the Electoral Commission told the council it must “learn its lesson” and “improve the service for voters” in the city.

The report by Jeremy Thomas, head of legal and democratic services at Oxford City Council, said Mr John, who has been in the role for 12 years, was delivering poll cards in Summertown and Wolvercote when he left the bag on a wall. He was covering for a colleague and had printed 200 extra cards because he thought some were missing for part of Woodstock Road.

But it was only when he was in the area that he realised the cards were not missing at all.

The report, obtained by the Oxford Mail, said: “Unfortunately, Mr John placed the duplicates in a bag on a wall about halfway down Bainton Road to separate them from the original print run which he was delivering and, by an oversight, left them there.

“On finishing the delivery, roughly 45 minutes later, he realised his mistake and went back to the spot where he had left them, but they had gone.”

Abingdon builder Mark Newman, 37, found the cards in a skip in Harpes Road, Sunnymead, three weeks before the county council and European elections on June 4, and handed them to police.

The report continued: “It is now clear that they were picked up by persons unknown and dumped in a skip in Harpes Road.”

The report also said Mr John only picked up the cards from the police station four days later.

Green Party candidate Sushila Dhall lost by 128 votes to Liberal Democrat Alan Armitage. She believes up to 600 cards may have gone missing during the election.

She called for an investigation into problems in West Central Oxford and alerted police in East Oxford when a man discovered his vote had been used by someone else.

Ms Dhall said: “The whole event was a disgrace. Thank goodness the Electoral Commission exists to hold councils to account.”

Mr Newman said: “This is a complete farce. What on earth is a council worker doing leaving cards on a wall?”

The report clears officials of “wilful non-delivery” but admits the process is liable to “human error”.

Oxford City Council last night said Mr John should have informed the Town Hall as soon as the cards went missing. The report said: “The electoral services manager acknowledges once the general level of complaints in relation to poll cards had become apparent it would have been beneficial and appropriate to have informed both myself and the county council election co-ordinator, Rachel Dunn, of the ‘skip’ incident, and he apologises for not doing so.”

City council spokesman Louisa Dean confirmed no action had been taken against Mr John.

The report outlined six ways in which the council can improve the service to voters (see panel), including the withholding of pay for delivery teams until after an election.

An Electoral Commission spokesman said: “We have contacted the returning officer involved to ensure lessons are learnt and that the service is improved for voters.”

Mr Thomas said: “Our investigations have found the incident where duplicate poll cards were found in a skip and returned to us can be put down to simple human error and certainly not a systemic failure in relation to poll card delivery.”

The electoral reforms being brought in are: Written concise instructions to be issued to all deliverers of polling cards in one document setting out the council’s clear expectations in terms of their task Deliverers will be required to check and sign to certify their receipt of the appropriate number of poll cards Deliverers will be required to note on a delivery sheet which details the addresses are to be delivered to, the date and approximate time of delivery to each street Deliverers will be required to return the delivery sheet on completion of the task Payments to deliverers will be delayed until post-election Complaints to the electoral office of non-delivery of poll cards will be logged so patterns or trends of non-delivery may be more quickly identified and rectified by way of replacement/additional delivery.