Voters have been banned from Thursday's General Election count after a slip-up allowed a pop group to book the usual venue.

At the last election in 2001 the results for Brighton and Hove's three Parliamentary seats were announced in the Brighton Centre to a crowd of up to 500 people.

But officials were forced to look for alternative premises for this year's count when they realised the centre had been claimed by Girls Aloud for a date of their UK tour.

They eventually settled on Hove Town Hall and, after consulting with police, scaled down the event because of security concerns. This time candidates will only be permitted to bring a handful of supporters with them to the count.

The slip-up occurred because election officials at Brighton and Hove City Council waited until last November to try to book the Brighton Centre - even though a May 5 General Election had been on the cards since January 2004.

One of the candidates standing in Thursday's election, Keith Taylor, attacked the decision to ban the public from the count as "bereft of imagination".

Councillor Taylor, the Green Party's candidate for Brighton Pavilion, said: "Not only is it anti-democratic to disbar voters from the announcement of the results, the decision shows an unwillingness to seek alternative arrangements to find a way round the safety issues."

But Chris Fossey, deputy acting returning officer at the city council, said Hove Town Hall was not big enough to provide a public room as well as counting rooms.

Even the council chamber, which is not being used for counting votes, was too small to hold the hundreds of supporters who would want access.

He said: "We are not allowing the public in for security reasons. We haven't got the space and it would have been a real security headache to have a support room for the public."

May 3, 2005