Buckler's Park Community Hub becomes a polling place and Crowthorne East moves to the Morgan Centre. Councillors vote on Wednesday 9 September.

Councillors will be asked on Wednesday to approve a new polling scheme for Bracknell Forest that changes where voters go in exactly two of the borough’s 39 polling districts. Both are in Crowthorne.

The Polling District and Polling Place Review 2026 goes to Full Council at Time Square at 7.30pm on Wednesday 9 September. It asks the council to endorse the Returning Officer’s proposed scheme, set out in Annex A. The two changes are:

  • Buckler’s Park (1,335 electors) gets its own primary polling place at Buckler’s Park Community Hub. The Morgan Centre becomes its reserve venue.
  • Crowthorne East (2,243 electors) moves to The Morgan Centre as its primary polling place. Crowthorne Parish Hall, where those voters used to go, becomes the reserve.

Crowthorne West, the largest of the three districts at 2,841 electors, is unchanged and keeps Crowthorne Parish Hall. Everywhere else in the borough, all 34 remaining district entries in Annex A say the same thing: no changes proposed.

The Buckler’s Park move is the borough’s only extra venue. The report says one additional polling place has been added to the total, and puts the reason plainly: the estate’s electorate has grown since the last review, so the Community Hub “is now the most suitable location for voters in the area”.

What it means for you

Nothing changes before the next borough elections in May 2027, and nobody has to do anything now. If you vote in Buckler’s Park or Crowthorne East, expect a different address on your poll card when it arrives. Everyone else in Bracknell, Sandhurst, Binfield, Warfield and Winkfield is being asked to keep going to the same place.

The review is not a boundary change. Your ward, your councillors and your council tax band are unaffected. It only decides which buildings the Returning Officer may use.

Proposed polling places for Crowthorne's three districts Buckler's Park, with 1,335 electors, moves from The Morgan Centre to Buckler's Park Community Hub. Crowthorne East, with 2,243 electors, moves from Crowthorne Parish Hall to The Morgan Centre. Crowthorne West, with 2,841 electors, stays at Crowthorne Parish Hall. Crowthorne is the only part of the borough where voting moves Proposed primary polling places, with the electorate of each district as at 1 April 2026. Polling districtElectorsWhere you vote nowProposed Buckler's Park1,335The Morgan CentreBuckler's Park Community Hub Crowthorne East2,243Crowthorne Parish HallThe Morgan Centre Crowthorne West2,841Crowthorne Parish HallCrowthorne Parish Hall, no change Buckler's Park Community Hub is the one venue being added to the borough's total. The Morgan Centre becomes its reserve. Crowthorne Parish Hall stays in the scheme as Crowthorne West's primary venue and Crowthorne East's reserve. The borough's other 36 polling districts are unchanged. Source: Bracknell Forest Council, Polling District and Polling Place Review 2026, Annex A. Graphic by Bracknell Online
A polling place is the building the council designates. The polling station is the room inside it, chosen by the Returning Officer for each election.

A Crowthorne nursery may have to shut on polling day

The review ran a consultation from 9 April to 11 May 2026 and drew 29 responses, published in full as Annex B. One of them is the sharpest practical objection in the document, and the scheme does not resolve it.

A respondent writing about Crowthorne Parish Hall told the council the site now has a day nursery on it, open 7am to 6pm, 51 weeks a year. They asked the council to stop using the hall and suggested two alternatives in the village: the room called The Heart at Crowthorne Baptist Church, next to the library, and the Methodist Church hall on Dukes Ride. Their closing line is unambiguous.

If these venues cannot accommodate you, we will have to notify the nursery that they must close for the day but we would prefer to avoid this if possible.

The proposed scheme keeps Crowthorne Parish Hall as the primary polling place for Crowthorne West and the reserve for Crowthorne East. Annex B records no published reply from the Electoral Review Working Group to that response.

Wildridings still votes outside its ward, because of a Thursday booking

Two respondents pressed for a polling station inside Wildridings. One wrote that “it remains my position that Wildridings should have a polling station within the ward, not least to make voting more accessible for residents”, and said the rector at Easthampstead Parish Church had been willing to discuss the parish hall. A second backed siting it at the Parish Church of St Michael and St Mary Magdalene, Easthampstead.

Annex A gives the answer for the Wildridings district, which has 2,833 electors. Easthampstead Parish Church was looked at. It has “suitable facilities and capacity for the electorate”. But:

an existing Thursday morning booking means it cannot currently be used as either the primary or alternative polling place.

British elections are held on Thursdays. Wildridings therefore keeps The Open Learning Centre as its polling place, with Easthampstead and Wildridings Community Centre as the reserve.

The other things residents told the council

The rest of the 29 responses are mostly approving, and the report says as much: the majority supported the arrangements already in place. Four points are worth recording.

  • Great Hollands. Two respondents said the signage does not make clear whether a voter is in Great Hollands North or Great Hollands South. The council replied that it has added signage for both and will look for further ways to make the distinction clearer.
  • Great Hollands, again. One respondent said the lighting at the community centre was dim and that they would not be comfortable going alone at night, and suggested Woodenhill pavilion instead.
  • Sandhurst. A respondent at the Town Council offices said party tellers congregate at the entrance and question voters about ID, voting number and address, which “is seen as intimidation by many voters”. The council said it recognises tellers as part of the process and will work with Presiding Officers and Polling Station Inspectors on supervision, and with political parties “to draw suitable boundaries”.
  • Ascot. One respondent suggested Ascot Racecourse as an alternative venue. The council noted that the racecourse falls outside its boundaries at a general election, but will keep it in mind for other polls.

Why the review happened at all

Bracknell Forest finished its last statutory polling review on 31 January 2024. This one is outside the statutory timetable and was run, the report says, to consider whether further changes are needed before the local elections in May 2027.

The trigger is the Elections Act 2022, and specifically the rules on handing postal votes in at polling stations, which the council says “can have an impact on Presiding Officer workload on election days”. Every venue was assessed on accessibility, ease of access, capacity, availability, parking and public transport, and the logistics of getting equipment there.

The extra venue costs money in staffing and hire, but the report says those costs fall on the body funding the relevant poll rather than on the council’s own budget.

One thing to watch. In Warfield, Brownlow Hall is the polling place for the St Michael’s district (2,420 electors) and the reserve for Quelm (1,579). Annex A records that the hall’s leasing arrangements change at the end of April 2027, weeks before the May 2027 elections. The Returning Officer expects it will still be available to hire.

Sources

More local information