Reigate & Banstead Polling Stations: 2,743 Could Move

2,743 voters in Reigate & Banstead would vote somewhere different under proposals the borough council has published, and the deadline to comment on them is Monday 7 September, six days away.

Six polling places would change. The largest single move is in Reigate, where 1,158 electors in the RGT4A and RGT5 districts would be shifted from the Colman Redland Centre to Donyngs Indoor Bowls Club. The council’s own worked example shows what that means at one address: a resident of 16 Doods Park Road currently walks 0.2 miles, about five minutes, to vote. Under the proposal they would walk 0.9 miles, about 18 minutes (Interim Polling Place and Polling District Review 2026, PDF).

The figure of 2,743 is our addition of the elector counts the council gives for each affected district. The council does not publish a total.

Why this is happening now

The review is a consequence of local government reorganisation, not a change of mind about buildings.

Reigate & Banstead Borough Council will be replaced by East Surrey Council, and the Community Governance Review that goes with it creates a new tier of town and parish councils. The borough council agreed the review’s final recommendations on 26 March 2026. East Surrey Council is expected to decide on 14 September 2026 whether to make the legal Orders that implement them.

Polling districts have to line up with those new boundaries before the first town and parish elections in May 2027. Under the proposals:

• Redhill Town Council would take in the whole of the Redhill East and North Earlswood ward, the whole of the Redhill West and Meadvale ward, the two Whitebushes and South Earlswood districts, and four districts in the Merstham and Banstead South ward.
• Reigate Town Council would take in the whole of the Reigate ward and the South Park and Woodhatch districts.
• Banstead & The Villages Parish Council would take in Banstead, Woodmansterne and Chipstead, Nork and Tattenhams, Tadworth, Walton and Kingswood, plus the five remaining districts in the Merstham and Banstead South ward, including Lower Kingswood.
• Horley Town Council and Salfords & Sidlow Parish Council carry on covering the districts they cover now.

Every polling district code in the borough would also be renamed, dropping the old borough ward initials for East Surrey ward ones. BAN1 becomes BWC1, HRC1 becomes HE1, and so on.

The six changes, and who they affect

Three of the Horley moves have the same purpose. Tanyard Barn Community Centre currently serves districts that will sit in different town council wards, which the council says means more ballot boxes, more ballot books and more chance of confusion on polling day. Two districts are moved out of it, one is moved in, and each of the four Horley venues then serves a single ward.

The council rates the Horley changes as low impact and gives numbers to back it. For the 150 voters of HRE5, walking times to the new venue vary from seven minutes shorter to four minutes longer. Some addresses actually gain: 82 Oakwood Road drops from a 16-minute walk to Tanyard Barn to a 9-minute walk to Edmonds Hall.

The two that cost people time

Reigate. The council’s variance for the RGT5 district is small, minus four to plus two minutes. For RGT4A it is minus two to plus 13 minutes. Doods Park Road is the street that carries the cost: number 16 goes from a five-minute walk to an 18-minute one, number 31 from 11 minutes to 13, and number 66 from nine minutes to 15.

The council’s reason is not cost or capacity. It is that RGT4A and RGT5 were moved into the Redhill West & Meadvale ward by the county boundary review, and if the polling place stayed at the Colman Redland Centre, staff there would have to run two different town councils and three different town council wards in the same election.

Lower Kingswood. CKW3 is a rural district of 207 electors that currently shares Chipstead Bowling Club with CKW2. After the boundary changes the two are no longer in the same East Surrey ward or town council ward, so the council proposes moving CKW3 to the Church of the Wisdom of God at Lower Kingswood, which already serves two other districts.

The council published drive-time maps for both options rather than a table. Read against its own legend, they show CKW3 moving from a mixture of the under-five-minute and five-to-seven-minute bands to almost entirely the seven-to-nine-minute band. The council acknowledges that “some voters may have to travel further”. The combined electorate at the church would rise to about 2,097.

Where nothing changes

Three wards’ worth of the borough is untouched. There are no proposed changes to polling districts or places in Banstead, Woodmansterne and Chipstead (BAN1 to BAN3, CKW1, CKW2), in Nork and Tattenhams (NOR1 to NOR3, TCP1), or in Tadworth, Walton and Kingswood.

Three further changes are administrative and the council says they have no effect on electors: merging SPW3 and SPW5, both already voting at Woodhatch Community Centre; merging EWB1 and EWB3, both already at Earlswood Baptist Church; and merging MSJ1A and MSJ4A in Reigate. In each case the point is to let one register be split evenly between two polling stations in the same building.

What it means for you

• Check whether your district is one of the six. If it is, the building you vote in would change from the first election held under the new register.
• Comment by Monday 7 September 2026. Email elreg@reigate-banstead.gov.uk or write to Electoral Services, Reigate & Banstead Borough Council, Town Hall, Castlefield Road, Reigate, RH2 0SH.
• If you object, suggest an alternative. The council specifically asks anyone making a representation to name other buildings that could be used, and says accessibility for disabled voters is a priority consideration.
• What cannot be changed here: ward names and boundaries, parliamentary constituencies, and community identity arguments. Those belong to other reviews.
• The dates after the deadline: responses considered 8 to 16 September, final proposals 17 September, full council decision 1 October, review concluded 27 November, and the revised register of electors published 1 December 2026.
• You will not be left guessing. The council says that where a polling place changes, electors are told in advance on their poll card and, where it holds an email address, by email.

The full 32-page proposal, including maps for every ward and the new district naming scheme, is on the council’s interim review page, which also links an interactive map.