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Cornwall Council has finally written to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg about the issue of second home voter registration. The council's Electoral Review Panel asked for the letter to be written at a meeting on 2nd July. It was finally signed off and sent by email on 23rd November.

Yesterday evening I had a chat with the council's top legal eagle, Richard Williams, and asked him why it had taken so long. "Mea culpa," he said, accepting full responsibility and outlining a sequence of unfortunate events which he describes as belonging to the "cock-up" theory of history.

The very first line of the four-paragraph letter tells Clegg "I want to bring an important and urgent issue to your attention" - Richard tells me that no irony was intended. The letter describes the issue of second home voters as "a particularly acute problem in Cornwall" and in a three-page appendix recommends a 1998 suggestion from a constitutional law academic that people with more than one home should nominate a "prinicipal" place of residence for voting purposes - and vote only once. Richard says this principle should apply also to local council elections.

Richard said the research and typing required to produce this letter probably took half a day. He accepts fully that it should not have taken four months and 21 days for it to reach Nick Clegg. I think you can hear my interview with Richard about this on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Cornwall tomorrow morning.