CONFUSED by the number of votes awarded to the Conservative candidates for election to Highworth Town Council? Well, you’re not the only one.

The official figures, published on Swindon Borough Council’s website this afternoon, showed the 10 Tory town councillor hopefuls score 32,334 votes between them – compared to the 9,615 won by the other nine Labour and Independent candidates.

But the numbers didn’t seem to add up.

According to the council, there were 2,477 ballot papers issued. Of these, 20 papers were spoiled or rejected for another reason.

People were each given the chance to select up to 15 candidates. Assuming everyone who got a ballot paper voted 15 times, that would mean around 37,155 votes were cast. But not the 42,000 votes that can be calculated by tallying-up all of the votes cast (according to the figures on Swindon Borough Council's website).

What appears to have happened is a confusion over counting party bloc votes.

On their polling card, voters can give all their votes to one party. Last night, these bloc votes seem to have been double-counted.

The borough said it had apologised to candidates – but stressed the bungle made no difference to the overall result.

A Swindon Borough Council spokesman said: “Unfortunately, there was an accounting error when the bloc votes for Highworth Parish Council were counted in the early hours of this morning.

“We examined the working papers in great detail this morning and are extremely confident that the correct candidates have been elected. This was clearly a case of human error at the end of a very long night of counting, but a full investigation will be carried out to ensure this does not happen again.

“We have informed the relevant candidates and apologised.”