NO one will forget the chaos at the Council House on the day after the elections.

Candidates, agents and party supporters had turned up bleary-eyed after a long night at the election counts to find out who had won 23 contested Bristol City Council seats.

Everyone expected the results to be declared from about 10am but the rumours began that there had been a problem – there was a discrepancy with some of the ballot papers and the Acting Returning Officer Stephen McNamara eventually gathered everyone in the foyer to say that all the papers for all the seats would have to be counted before any results could be announced.

It left many of us aimlessly hanging around, only to discover by sheer chance or word of mouth when more problems were discovered.

Eventually it took until after 4pm before all the results were declared and by that time, everyone was far too tired and weary to be angry at the series of blunders which marred an otherwise exciting election.

The council's chief executive Jan Ormondroyd promised on that day to hold an inquiry to ensure transparency and regain people's trust in the democratic system and an independent consultant, Gill Dixon was duly appointed to review.

Perhaps before we launch into the nuts and bolts of her findings, two crucial points should be highlighted. First, there was no evidence in Bristol that voters could not register their vote by 10pm as in other parts of the country and second, Ms Dixon is satisfied that despite all the blunders, the results which were finally declared were accurate.

She discovered that the problems began way before May 7.

Apart from more than half of the election phone queries going unanswered, the office for the council's electoral services department in the Corn Exchange has been described as "woefully inadequate". One of Ms Dixon's many recommendations to the council is to find alternative accommodation.

Then we come to the poll cards, a total of 500,000 of which were distributed to households for the general and local elections.

It is not essential to take your polling card with you when you vote although it does help. Nonetheless, Ms Dixon discovered that 1,373 poll cards in the Bristol West constituency were not printed. This was due to human error when a sequence number was incorrectly entered on a print run.

On postal voting, a number of problems occurred. On April 23, 2,381 Bristol East postal ballot papers were sent to voters in Bristol West by mistake. This led to checks which discovered that parliamentary postal ballot papers had also been issued incorrectly in Knowle ward because Bristol East papers had been wrongly packed for Bristol South.

The reason for this glitch was apparently due to a software problem. A constituency boundary change which had been correctly entered into the software did not follow through to the printing of the ballot papers. Another of Ms Dixon's recommendations is an updating of the software programme.

Many complaints were received by the council for late delivery of postal voting papers but Ms Dixon says it is hard to see how they could be distributed much earlier, given the tight timetables.

When the postal votes were opened and checked, the problems really began to take off, thanks to postal votes being put into the wrong ballot boxes. This led to discrepancies in ballot paper totals and votes being "lost" and then "found".

Among the blunders were:

● 165 Bishopston postal votes placed in a Bishopsworth ballot box.

● 225 Postal votes in Brislington East were mixed up with a ballot box for Brislington West.

● postal votes in Bristol North West were incorrectly put into a ballot box for Henleaze.

● the discovery of 685 ballot papers for Bishopsworth in the Bedminster box.

Ms Dixon said there was "a strong perception of lack of transparency in the process of moving ballot papers through the process".

"Although verbal briefings took place, it seemed that many candidates and agents had little or no information as to why packets of votes were arriving and being added in at a late stage," said Ms Dixon.

"This lack of transparency and communication led to descriptions of votes being 'lost' and then 'found', which although incorrect, gained currency as a description of events."

During the parliamentary counts, the main bone of contention was the length of time taken before results were declared. People complained as count staff were "sitting doing nothing" leading to the conclusion that management was poor and that resources were not being fully utilised to enable speedy progress.

Ms Dixon said there were three main reasons for the delays:

● the checking of postal votes which were handed in late: they had to be taken to the Council House for checking, ward by ward, and then taken back to each count.

● single ballot boxes instead of separate boxes for postal votes, which meant another stage in the process to sort them all out.

● verification: "It appears that in Bristol, a decision was taken to commence the count before the final postal votes were received back from the Council House in response to the delays. These last postal votes were then mixed in with the final boxes still awaiting counting, in accordance with the requirement to mix ballot papers."

Ms Dixon said it was important to note that the problems during the local election counts did not happen in any kind of order.

She said: "For those involved, as they were seeking to resolve one issue, they received reports of another problem elsewhere. Because of this, the communication was wholly inadequate, as all key staff were absorbed in dealing with the problems rather than ensuring clear communication.

"This underlines the key point of over reliance on a small number of key staff who in the end were unable to cope, in large measure due to fatigue of having worked intensively in the build up to the election and throughout the whole of the previous day and night.

"The resultant picture is one where key staff were attempting to deal with problems and get things back on track, communication being ineffective even where it took place, rumours and hearsay filling the communication gap, leading to ever escalating concern and demands for clarification from key staff who were trying to resolve the issues."

On the Avonmouth count, where there was initially a discrepancy of 52 votes and the winner was chosen after a number of recounts by picking a name from an empty ballot box, the Electoral Commission has concluded the result was legal and does stand.

Ms Dixon concludes in her report: "This report sets to address the errors and problems during the 2010 elections and identify improvements.

"It is important to acknowledge that very high standards and professionalism exhibited by staff through this election."

A full copy of the report is on www.bristol.gov.uk/elections,