Ballot packs for the election, affecting 14.8m voters in the North East, North West, East Midlands and Yorkshire & Humber, had to be with the Royal Mail by midnight on Tuesday 1 June. A spokesman for the department for constitutional affairs said, as PrintWeek went to press, that all of the ballot packs had been printed, and that 97% were with Royal Mail.

But at least one council warned that it could not meet the deadline for delivery of the packs because of printing problems.

Bradford returning officer Philip Robinson admitted the deadline would be missed after more than 250,000 ballot packs had to be reprinted. He said in a statement that after "delays in the printing of ballot packs, we now expect nearly all of them to be delivered by the midnight deadline and the remainder by tommorrow (2 June)."

In Gateshead, a second printer was brought in to address and pack 150,000 ballot slips after original printer Document Technology (DTL) was unable to merge the addresses on the three documents. DTL managing director Jon Sanders, who was taken ill on Wednesday (26 May) with a "stress related illness", blamed short deadlines for his company's problems.

In Stockport and Greater Manchester, 220,000 ballot packs had to be reprinted after Oldham printer Thomas Dornan printed ballot papers with incorrect candidate names. A spokesman for Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council said that the printer had been replaced and the council was "on track" to meet the deadline.

The problems came after the Government had ignored warnings about the scale of the experiment by the Electoral Commission.

Story by Josh Brooks