A PARISH council by-election cost more than £20,000 to run, documents show.

The Eastcott vote was prompted by the resignation of Lib Dem Dave Wood as a parish councillor. The May poll was won by Labour man Patrick Herring.

The borough council said elections were not cheap and the bill included the costs of printing thousands of polling cards and hiring the polling stations.

But South Swindon parish councillors expressed shock at the amount the by-election cost them.

Swindon Borough Council sent the parish a bill for £10,103.62 for running the election, which saw 3,517 people voting for the three candidates who stood for the parish seat.

Even that was just half the cost of poll in the Eastcott ward on May 3. The borough picked up the other £10,000 of the tab, as a ward councillor was elected on the same day at Eastcott’s five polling stations.

Steve Allsopp, a parish and ward councillor for Walcot and Park North, joked: “If we had an understanding of how much a by-election actually cost, we might have fewer of them.”

Mayor Junab Ali, a Labour councillor for the central ward, jokingly suggested the Liberal Democrats should be made to pay the costs of the by-election.

Other councillors were concerned about the future implications for parish councils across Swindon.

John Firmin of the parish council's £10,000 bill: “That strikes me as a huge cost. Next year we will have a parish election in every ward in South Swindon.”

He asked if the cost was higher as a result of the parish by-election being run at the same time as the Voter ID pilot, which saw people turned away from polling stations if they had not brought their polling card or another form of identification.

Coun Neil Hopkins criticised the borough council for failing to provide a detailed breakdown of how much had been spent and on what: “At the moment we’ve just got some numbers down on a spreadsheet.”

Overall, last May’s election cost around £300,000, meaning the Eascott poll ate-up six per cent of the budget.

A spokesman said: “Elections are not cheap to run whether they are for parishes or the borough council. Parish councils can cover large or small areas so the number of people voting can vary quite significantly. This particular parish ward is one of the largest of all the parishes and is similar in size to a borough ward with more than 7,700 people registered to vote.

“The cost takes into account many elements such as, but not limited to, the printing of thousands of ballot papers, poll cards, and postal vote packs, the delivery costs for poll cards and postal vote mailers, polling station hire, staff costs and the cost of the count itself.

“The parish council has been given a full breakdown of these costs. Where possible costs are shared between the borough and the parishes but there are certain costs that have to be borne solely by the parish such as ballot papers.”