For the first time, voters had to take some form of photo ID to the polling station for last week's local elections. 

It is not clear how many people were turned away for not having any photo ID, but Councillor Anthony Mckeown - leader of High Peak Borough Council - thinks it may be one of a number of reasons for a small turnout.

His ward of Gamesley saw just 16 per cent of people voting - the lowest of all 28 wards across the High Peak, where figures fluctuated, with the Hayfield ward having the highest with 53.24 per cent.

“To a certain extent, local elections have always had slightly less turnouts," Cllr Mckeown said. "I think there’s a combination of factors that have played into this. “It’ll be interesting to see when they put the numbers together on how many people were turned away with no photo ID.

“But I think the one figure that won’t be recorded is how many people saw the stuff around photo ID and decided not to even try. I think there will be quite a lot of people in that category.

“I know myself I don’t drive so I don’t have a driving licence and my longest holiday was in Northern Ireland so I didn’t need a passport.

“I had to get a voter authority certificate and a number of people won’t have wanted to go through that process, particularly young people who may have bus passes but they can’t use them to vote, whereas for older people bus passes aren’t a problem even though they have been issued by the same people." 

He added: “There are lots of quirks in there but there is still work to do to see what we can do to try to improve turnout. It’s another of those things we’ll have to add on to the list and see if there’s anything we can do.”

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