Councillors Jill Whitehead, Alan Salter and Hamish Pollock have represented the Carshalton Central ward on Sutton Council as a team since the May 2010 local council elections. They will be fully involved in the coming 2014 local elections to be held on Thursday, 22nd May.

To vote:

• existing registered postal voters will receive postal votes from Sutton Council.
• non-postal voters in Carshalton Central ward will be notified of voting at only one of the three usual polling stations in the ward, depending upon where they live. The polling stations are:-

1. The Scout Hall, Westmead Road.
2. Highfield Hall, Carshalton Road.
3. All Saints’ C of E School, Rotherfield Road.

Jill says:

Please register to vote in these important elections, if you have not already done so. To be assured of a postal vote, your postal vote application forms need to be at the Electoral Registration Officer, London Borough of Sutton, Civic Offices, St. Nicholas Way, Sutton, SM1 1EA by 5pm on Wednesday, 7th May 2014.  Telephone 020-8770 4179 for a form. You have 3 weeks to do so!

Carshalton Central ward is one of nine wards that make up the constituency of Carshalton and Wallington represented in the UK Parliament since 1997 by Tom Brake MP. The London Borough of Sutton includes 18 wards in total – all of this constituency and also all of the Sutton and Cheam constituency that is made up of the nine other wards of the borough.

The next local elections are to be held on Thursday, 22nd May 2014, where eligible voters will each have three votes.

Usually these local elections are held on the first Thursday in May, but this year they will be put back from 1st May to 22nd May so as to coincide with the 2014 European Parliament Elections on that date. Direct elections are to be held for all 32 London boroughs, all 36 metropolitan boroughs, 74 second-tier district authorities, 20 unitary authorities and various mayoral posts, all in England. Elections to the new councils in Northern Ireland will also be held on the same day.

All registered electors (British, Irish, Commonwealth and European Union citizens) who are aged 18 or over on the day of the election are entitled to vote in the local elections. Those who are temporarily away from their ordinary address (for example, away working, on holiday, in student accommodation or in hospital) are also entitled to vote in the local elections, although those who have moved abroad and registered as overseas electors cannot vote in the local elections. Those who are registered to vote at more than one address (such as a university student who has a term-time address and lives at home during holidays) are entitled to vote in the local elections at each address, as long as they are not in the same local government area.

The count for these sets of elections is likely to take some considerable time whilst ballots are sorted and so forth, and the result of the local council elections should be known by the early morning of Friday, 23rd May 2014.