This seems to be a popular search request today.
So, I suggest that either you get the leaflet that the
Or, (this works better in urban than rural areas), you go for a little walk round the block, thinking especially of where schools, churches and tennis clubs are, and you look for big signs saying "Polling Station". Go in there, and if your road isn't on the list, the nice polling clerks should be able to direct you to the right one. If you do this at peak 'coming home' time, you might have to queue. During the afternoon voting is normally slow, as there is a rush on the way to work, and another steady stream as the pensioners and stay-at-home Mums go between nine and eleven. It picks up a bit at school run time, depending on how many schools are actually open.
Oh, and if you haven't voted already, just out of interest, do take a note of whether your Polling Station is accessible to people in wheelchairs and with other ambulatory restrictions.
(In my first election in 1994 someone arrived in a wheelchair and couldn't get in; fortunately, I was taking numbers with John Baron, who was elected Conservative MP for Billericay in 2001, and he's a big strapping ex-guardsman and was able to lift the person and wheelchair. I could do nothing, I was still recovering from having my shoulder repaired; not every polling station will have an ex-guardsman on duty). In a council by-election, the polling clerks ended up taking a ballot box outside because someone could not climb the five steps. This was strictly illegal, but I, and the Tory and LibDem who were taking numbers, all shut our eyes and pretended it wasn't happening.
Both options are undignified.
And why do we use schools, anyway? I know it's because they're Council owned and fairly uniformly distributed throughout the neighbourhood, but it means many children missing a day's school, and the parents having to make childcare arrangements, and causes resentment in those kids whose schools aren't used. Mind you, today is Ascension Day, a Holy Day of Obligation, so we would have had the day off, anyway. I don't suppose any church schools do that these days.
If you've got a child who's off school today, take them to the polling station. A friend of mine boasts he first voted when he was five, because his Mum told him which candidate to vote for. He even got to put the paper in the box.
