IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Chaseside, BOURNEMOUTH, BH7 7DX

A council-run leisure centre, opened in 1987, with a very distinctive design, with wave-like wooden beams forming the shell. It is the second busiest leisure centre in the UK. The Littledown Juniors Football Club was started here in 1988, and nearly 1500 children between the ages of 4 and 14 play regularly in around 170 teams.

Looking over the main hall of Image at 2:21am on a Friday morning, as the count takes place for the general election for the constituencies of Bournemouth East and Bournemouth West. The poll is combined with the local elections for the borough, and these will be counted on Friday afternoon. When the polls closed at 10pm last night, polling station staff brought their ballot boxes and paperwork to the centre as quickly as possible. In a marquee out the back these were checked in, making sure that nothing was amiss, and the serial number of the first unused ballot paper in each book noted, which could be compared with the last number given out to ensure no papers are unaccounted for. The ballot boxes only are then swiftly transferred to the main hall. As this was a joint parliamentary and local election, the first job of the counters was to separate the two types of paper, as both were put into the same ballot box at polling stations. The local ones were green and much longer than the white general election papers, as three councillors are elected to each ward compared with the single MP elected to Westminster. The picture is taken while most ward counters are still performing this part of the process, although a couple of wards have already started counting the general election papers. The count staff are occupying the two corridors which have the signboards along them, indicating the ward at each position. The wards on the left-hand side form the Bournemouth East constituency and those on the right Bournemouth West. The staff area extends towards the back of the hall, where the stage can be seen - this is where the returning officer will announce the results. The candidates, their agents and certain other persons are permitted to observe the count - they can do so along the far left, far right and central aisles. These aisles are connected directly below us (better appreciated in the side-on view Image). They are able therefore to watch all aspects of the count and can - and many do - sit for fairly long periods at their ward count. They are not allowed to touch the table or the ballots, nor can they interfere or distract the staff. The entire line of tables therefore forms a zigzagging barrier between the staff and observers' areas. As a ward finishes counting the votes for each candidate, its ballot papers are taken to an area towards the far left of the hall, where they will be piled up to give the overall picture of who is going to be elected. The piles of 100, and then 1000, votes form a kind of physical bar-chart on the tables, and these are watched with eagerness by the candidates, even where a fully expected result transpires: Bournemouth constituencies are a safe Conservative stronghold and it does not take long to see the proliferation of blue batches. To the far left, what is usually a viewing gallery for sport is reserved for the media. Once all the votes have been counted, and the totals at the various stages tally, the result can be declared. We see the mayor declare Bournemouth West at 5:54am here: Image and the East constituency 25 minutes later here: Image At around noon, the local election count will be conducted in the same hall and is expected to finish at around 9:30pm. In the far corner of the room, a television beams the live television coverage to those who wish to watch the national picture develop. NB the picture is slightly blurred around the edges because of the criss-cross wires within the glass - photography is not permitted within the hall itself during the course of the election.

See Image] for comment on the processes that are happening below us. The linked picture is taken from one of the windows on the left wall. This image more clearly shows the observation area for candidates - an E-shaped area bottom, top, middle and left of picture - with the count staff going about their business in the two intervening aisles. The gallery ahead of us is reserved for the media and a few tv cameras can be seen pointing down on the event.

The swimming pool at the Image is housed in this large section of the building. It can be seen here that the glazed wall is not in fact vertical but 'leans' outwards slightly.

Detail of the water slides of the swimming pool at Image

It is 10:10pm on the day of the general election, and the first ballot boxes to arrive from polling stations will soon be here at Image ready for the count. In front of us are the tools we will need. An overview of the hall is here: Image It is a two-stage process - firstly the Verification, then the Count. As each ballot box arrives at the venue, it is checked in along with the various unused stationery, voter lists etc. The ballot accounts give the total number of votes contained within each box. Once everything is satisfactorily checked off, the process can begin. The VERIFICATION involves the ballot box being emptied onto a count staff team's table (the count staff work in teams of 6), and each ballot is turned up the right way and put into piles to be counted. At this stage, they are NOT sorted by candidate; the purpose is to establish that the number of ballots present matches the number supposed to be in the box. Each count staff will count the papers into 20, denoted by a paperclip; these are then swapped with the neighbouring person and double-checked. Each time five batches of 20 are reached, they are put into a rubber band to denote 100. Finally, a bulldog clip is attached to any residual batch of 1-19 and a Post-It note attached to signify the number. The six staff attending to each box will then pool their residual ballots to make up further 20s and be left with no more than one odd batch containing fewer. If the numbers do not tally, the entire boxful is re-counted from scratch. Once verified, these are taken to a central table. The ballots from each ballot box are combined here, and then collated into batches of 1000 votes ready for the second stage. The second stage, the COUNT, is where the votes are separated for each candidate. This election has five candidates, so we are aiming to have five piles of votes which total 1000. Any ballots with queries are set aside for adjudication and these are either put back into the pile if accepted as a valid vote, or sent for adjudication. The process is similar to the Verification in that paperclips denote 20 and rubber bands denote 100, but a piece of paper of the candidate's colour is wrapped around each set of 100 for that person. When the number of votes for each party are confirmed to total 1000 (less any sent for adjudication), the batch is signed off and taken to the collation point where they are displayed for candidates and their agents to view - eventually wrapped up further into 500s and 1000s. When every batch of 1000 votes has been counted (plus the inevitable final smaller batch), the results can be assimilated and the declaration made. See Image for the first declaration, made at 3:25am.

Looking down into the main hall of Image onto the count for the 2017 general election. (The view is unfortunately slightly marred by the wires through the glass.) The scene is far less frenetic than the last general election, in 2015, because that one included the local elections and was therefore more complex (see Image). It is 2:19am and the declarations of the winning candidates for the two constituencies are just over an hour away. The count staff occupy the area behind the tables as we look. The actual counting staff, working in teams of 6, are seen seated at the tables - those on the right-hand half of the room for the Bournemouth East constituency and those on the left for Bournemouth West. Each side has ten teams of counters, the three facing each other that we see below and seven facing the two side walls, backing onto the three that we see. Towards the rear of the room are the various other staff - those controlling the incoming ballot boxes to be counted, those collating the ballots once counted, the adjudicators, Returning Officer, and back-office staff such as IT, security and whatnot. The candidates and their agents may - and do - observe proceedings and can walk freely around to watch whatever table they wish. They are restricted to the far-left, far-right and central aisle, linked directly below us. They may not touch the tables, nor may they interrupt the work of the count staff, but they can observe that the count is conducted properly, and can also get an idea of how the voting is going as each ballot paper is turned face up and later sorted by candidate. For more discussion on the process for counting, see Image For the first of the two declarations, see Image

Looking down from the café area of Image into the main sports hall, which is the venue for Bournemouth's election counts. It is 9:20pm so there are 40 minutes until polls close, whereupon ballot boxes will be brought here. The room is split down the middle, as seen from here, for the two constituencies, Bournemouth East (right-hand side) and Bournemouth West. This is a more straightforward count than the general election in 2015, which was combined with the local elections - meaning that the various counting teams had to be carefully split into individual wards. This time, the teams on each side of the room did not need such differentiation and any ballot box could be given to any team. For the same view well into the process a few hours from now, see Image For more information on the actual process of counting the votes, see Image For the first of the two declarations, see Image

At 3:25 in the morning, the mayor, Councillor Lawrence Williams, stands up to the podium and confirms the result of the general election for the Bournemouth West constituency, (the Bournemouth East declaration would happen ten minutes or so later.) The current MP, Conor Burns, is re-elected unsurprisingly for the Conservative party, although with a much reduced majority over the Labour candidate who was propelled from third to second place in both Bournemouth seats. This declaration was much earlier in the night than the one two years ago, not because of turnout but because the 2015 election incorporated the local election too, so the count was a more complex process. See Image See Image for a view of the hall earlier in the evening when the count was still underway, and Image for a description of the counting process.

At 6:19am the Mayor of Bournemouth, Councillor Chris Mayne, announces the result of the election of Member of Parliament for Bournemouth East, while some of the candidates line up behind him. He announces the total number of votes cast for each candidate (alphabetically by surname), the number of spoilt ballot papers for each of several reasons, and then confirms the election of the successful candidate. It is not surprising that Conservative Tobias Ellwood is re-elected with a substantial majority. See Image] for a view of the count as it took place, and further description of the activities that led up to this declaration. This is 25 minutes after Cllr Mayne did the same for Bournemouth West, the town's other constituency (see Image).