No May poll for Atherstone and district voters as coronavirus hits democracy

Voters in Atherstone and district will miss out on going to the polls in May as coronavirus has dealt a blow to democracy.

The Government has announced that elections in England will be postponed for a year due to the outbreak of the global pandemic.

Although none of the members on North Warwickshire Borough Council were due to fight their seats, Warwickshire police and crime commissioner Philip Seccombe was up for re-election with his Labour opponent named as Ben Twomey.

But this afternoon Boris Johnson postponed the local, mayoral and PCC elections on Thursday, May 7 as total number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK reached 798

a single-day rise of 208. The Electoral Commission yesterday spoke of the "growing risks" to the delivery of the polls, calling for them to be delayed until the autumn to "mitigate" the impact of the virus. The net effect of no election for PCCs across England and Wales will mean them having to serve an extra year in office despite a number indicating their intention to step down at the 2020 elections. A spokesman for the Office of the West Midlands PCC told Nub News that the Government announcement looked certain to mean no polls this year and he was ensure what PCC David Jamieson intended to do with only six weeks before he was due to retire. On the sporting front, Atherstone Town CFC is still waiting to hear whether the Midland Football League will follow the lead set by Premier and EFL bodies and pull the plug on the fixture programe until next month. Adders are already facing a nightmare fixture backlog – playing catch-up with three games a week in order to finish their Division One programme. They have 16 league matches still to play. The MFL is currently discussing how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic with representatives of the other leagues within the national league system. Nub News this afternoon published a 'What Atherstone needs to know about coronavirus' which you can find here.