During Parliamentary Elections there are often Hustings events. These are often organised by schools, churches or local media. All candidates are often invited but sometimes the organisers are selective about whom they invite – not always fairly.

Wherever we have been the victim of unfair selection I am urging people to protest about selective invitations to hustings. Here is my correspondence:-

Dear All

Please find below a letter that I have written to my Returning Officer regarding electoral expenses, together with a letter that I wrote to Brentwood County High School regarding one of the hustings that I was not invited to.

Please adapt these letters to write to your Returning Officer regarding any hustings that you know that you were not invited to and to the person organising the hustings.

Letter to Returning Officer

Re: General Election 2015 – Candidates Expenses Returns – Hustings

I am writing to put you on notice that there were, I believe, at least three hustings (there may well have been more) in the recent General Election in the Brentwood and Ongar constituency where I was not invited to take part. The Electoral Commission’s Husting Events Rule 8, as enclosed, has made it clear that in the circumstances that not all the candidates were invited to take part in any hustings that the candidates who were invited have to make declaration of the cost of that hustings as part of their electoral expenses.

I am therefore giving notice that I do require this cost to be included in the other candidates expenses forms and require you to reject any of the other candidates’ expenses forms if they do not include these items.

I would confirm that I was only invited to one hustings, which was the Radio Phoenix FM hustings. The other candidates I believe were invited to all other hustings and therefore the cost of each of those hustings should be included in their returns. I am aware that I was not invited to either the Brentwood High School hustings, or Brentwood School hustings or the Anglo-European School hustings. All three of these hustings should therefore appear in all the other candidates’ expenses returns.

Please confirm receipt of this letter.

Yours faithfully

R C W Tilbrook

Chairman

The Headmaster

Dear Sir

Re: General Election Hustings

As you may know, I was one of the six candidates in the recent General Election for Brentwood and Ongar.

I note that you did not invite me to take part in the hustings which your school organised but which the other candidates were invited to.

Perhaps you had not read the enclosed explanation of the rules on hustings prepared by the Electoral Commission, as you did not send me any explanation for my exclusion, let alone the “objective reasons” specified in Rule 6.

Be that as it may, I would now ask you to let me have details of the cost of the hustings and also to confirm that you have notified the other candidates of that cost, which must be included in their election expenses returns as a donation which your school has made to their campaigning.

Yours faithfully

R C W Tilbrook

Returning Officer

B Borough Council

Dear Madam

Re: General Election 2015 – Candidates Expenses Returns – Hustings

Thank you your telephone message regarding my letter to the Council dated the 20th May. I have written letters to the organisers of the hustings, and enclose copies for your information.

Yours sincerely

R C W Tilbrook