Thousands of leaflets and letters sent to households across the borough by the council achieved their aim of getting the vast majority of Swindonians to know what they needed to take to vote last May.

When Swindon was chosen to take part bin a government voter identification trial, the borough council's communications teams was set the target of getting 80 per cent of voters to know what they had to do.

The target was also set of maintaining a turn out in the election of 32.6 for the elections.

The team more than met those targets.

Polling of residents before the election by the council's customer services team showed 80 per cent knew what was required for them, and turn out in the election was 39.7 per cent - seven per cent higher than the target and five per cent higher than the 34.4 per cent at the previous council-only election in 2016.

As well as a leaflet sent with council tax bills to 86,000 houses, and more distributed around the borough, poll cards had reminders printed on them, there were adverts on the back of 30 buses and posters at 58 bus shelters.

In the end, 60 voters were asked to return to a polling station with the appropriate identification, either their polling card or a driving licence picture card of passport.

Of those 60, 25 did not return to vote - just 0.04 per cent of the 62,191 people who turned up to vote.