THE elections office at Malvern Hills District Council is alerting residents that it is not behind a campaign leaflet urging people to vote yes in the upcoming referendum.

Many Malvern homes have received a mailout from the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign in the last week, encouraging them to register for a postal vote with the council and enclosing a form with MHDC’s address on it.

But Nigel Snape, head of democratic services at MHDC, said: “The production and circulation of these forms has nothing to do with the district council which clearly does not endorse any referendum campaign material.”

Pam Wilson. of Lansdowne Crescent, in Malvern, received one of the forms and contacted the Gazette with her concerns.

“At a glance it could easily look as though the electoral registration officer is asking you to vote yes,” she said. “I think because of the way it is designed that the influence is undue. Normally you can read around these things fairly easily but in this case I think there may be people who were unaware that it was not Malvern Hills encouraging them to vote yes.”

The referendum, which takes place at the same time as voting in local elections on Thursday, May 5, is on the system used for electing MPs to UK Parliament.