Planning an election is a mammoth task at the best of times but in the midst of a global pandemic, there are even more things to take into consideration.

Cornwall is set to go to the polls on May 6 to elect Cornwall Councillors, town and parish councillors and a Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC).

As a returning officer for Cornwall, it falls on Cornwall Council chief executive Kate Kennally to oversee the arrangements for polling day.

With hundreds of polling stations that will need to be set up and hundreds of staff to operate those as well as the army of staff needed to count the votes.

Ms Kennally said that while planning for May 6 had been difficult it was important that the election is safe.

She said that she was working with colleagues in public health to make the arrangements and that a "very detailed" risk assessment had been drawn up.

"We have 2,000 staff involved in running an election and we are having to make sure we have the right number of staff and not find ourselves with not enough people as they are self-isolating and shielding.

"We have prepared for extra staffing capacity to ensure that we will have enough people.

"We have had to think about polling stations and making sure they are a safe environment. It is looking at measures like those in place at the supermarket – making sure people go in one way and come out another for example, making sure there is enough space for people to social distance.

"In addition, we have found that some of the places that we would normally use for elections are being used to support people during the pandemic. Truro College was used last time for counting but they are using the sports hall for covid testing so we cannot use that venue."

In order to prepare the council held a discussion with volunteers to find out what should be in place to ensure people can vote safely.

Ms Kennally said: "It was a great discussion with people who were a bit worried and we were able to share what we are doing and listen to their thoughts.

"We talked about things like cleaning and social distancing at polling stations and making sure there were not too many people in polling stations at any one time."

One key way to ensure safe voting is to encourage people to vote using postal voting, something which the council expects many more people to do this year.

Ms Kennally said: "We have written to all people who are shielding and advising them around casting a postal vote and we are making sure that information about postal voting is available to all."

The key is to ensure that everyone who wants to vote is able to in a safe way.

The council chief executive said: "We want to make sure that going to the polling station is a really safe experience.

"We are really confident that what you are doing whether you vote in person or by post you can participate in this election because democracy matters."

After seeing the disputes in the US presidential elections last year regarding postal votes is the chief executive concerned of similar incidents here?

"In every election, we have more people exercising their ballot by postal vote – we have no concerns about the integrity of postal votes.

"There are different arrangements in the UK to the US and we don't see that there will be any issues. We do expect the number of postal votes to go up."

Once the ballot boxes are sealed shut the all-important counting is needed and, as in previous elections, the votes for Cornwall Council will be counted the day after – Friday, May 7.

And in order to keep the number of people in counting centres at a minimum, the other two elections will be counted on separate days.

Votes in the town and parish council elections will be counted on Saturday, May 8.

On Monday, May 10 the votes in the Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner election will be counted across Devon and Cornwall.

Ms Kennally said that would help ensure that those involved in the counts can follow social distance guidelines.

"It reflects that we don't want to have too many people in the count centre at any one time, by staggering the counts we can better manage the number of candidates, agents, media and count staff in the centre."

With the additional arrangements needed to host the election, there will also be extra costs and this has been acknowledged by the government which is providing funding for local councils.

The PCC election had been due to be held last year but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Elections for Cornwall Council will be different this year with the number of councillors being reduced from 123 to 87.

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