ON the eve of the most tightly fought General Election in Redditch in years, both Conservative and UKIP candidates have expressed serious concern about the town's voter registration system.

Conservative Karen Lumley said she was worried about the number of Redditch homes where the residents bore no relation to the names which appear on the electoral register.

She said she had found at least 50 homes like this in Smallwood alone and said a new ''rolling registration'' system should have prevented this.

Similarly, UKIP's John Ison said he had encountered about "one in 10" homes where the electoral register and those living there did not tally.

He told the Advertiser of an Abbeydale couple who had received polling cards for people they bought the house from 18 years ago, as well as another five cards with different names on.

Mrs Lumley said: "Under this new rolling register, this shouldn't happen, so it is a concern. We need to be careful that only the people registered properly actually vote."

The comments follow heightened concern nationally about electoral security after a widely publicised case of postal-voting fraud in Birmingham.

In Redditch, 9,833 people have applied for postal votes - about 15 per cent of the electorate - compared to 2,755 in 2001.

Mr Ison said: "We're concerned about the number of postal votes, especially after Birmingham. If turnout is low again, you could get as many as one in four of the votes being cast by post."

Redditch's deputy electoral registration officer, Steve Skinner, last week reassured people that stringent procedures were in place to deter postal voting fraud.

Yesterday, he said he was aware of the latest Conservative and UKIP concerns but said his team had done all they could to register voters properly.

Ultimately, he said polling cards were not "voting tickets" and polling station staff formed a final security check before they issued ballot papers.

Mr Skinner said: "So far as we're aware, we're working to essentially accurate registers. People vote where they are registered rather than where they are necessarily currently living.

"The Register of Electors is fully reviewed once a year, leading to the issue of a new register on December 1 each year. Residents are under a statutory obligation to return a registration form but we get about 93 per cent of returns back."

He added rolling registration allowed updates throughout the year but it was not an obligation. He said if people did not return registration forms, names were deleted in the second year of non-response.

Out-of-date entries could not therefore be carried forward for any longer than a year.

Labour's Jacqui Smith and Liberal Democrat Nigel Hicks said they were satisfied there were no problems.