Putney: General Election result missed by 6,500 votes

A “spreadsheet problem” has resulted in more than 6,500 votes being missed from the Putney election result declaration.

Labour’s Fleur Anderson took the south London seat in the July 4 contest, receiving what was announced overnight as 20,952 against Tory Lee Roberts’ total of 10,011.

But on Wednesday, Wandsworth Council revealed it had mistakenly not included 6,558 votes in total, publishing the revised results on its website.

The missing votes did not affect the overall result, with Ms Anderson still the winner and with a greater majority of 12,488 votes over Mr Roberts.

She received a total of 24,113 votes, while Mr Roberts received 11,625. In third place, Kieren McCarthy, the Liberal Democrat candidate, saw a total increase from 5,189 to 5,943.

A statement on Wandsworth Council’s website said: “We acknowledge an issue with the spreadsheet which resulted in all votes counted and properly allocated being included in the Putney Counting Night announcement for the 2024 General Election.

“This has been identified and the figures on this page have been updated. This did not affect the result or the order of the candidates.

“While we are confident that this was an isolated incident, we are taking this opportunity to review processes, with a particular focus on spreadsheet procedures.”

Wandsworth’s Conservative Party expressed its anger at the mistake and demanded a full explanation from the council.

Aled Richards-Jones, leader of the Conservative group on Wandsworth Council, said: “Previous Wandsworth elections were won by a few votes – three years ago the Tooting by-election was won by one vote, showing how important . is that every vote counts.

“However, today residents were told – without any explanation – that 6,558 votes had essentially disappeared during the counting process.

“The residents of Wandsworth deserve urgent clarification as to how an error of this magnitude could have occurred, why it was not detected at the time and what steps the council is taking to ensure this does not happen again it will never happen again.”