HOLIDAY homes owner Colin Payne has claimed last year's ballot to decide if Dartmouth became a Business Improvement District may have been 'flawed'. Mr Payne, who has chalets at Norton Park, is calling for the results to be made publically available. He wants South Hams Council's returning officer Alan Robinson to publish the results and confirm that the election was properly audited by the Electoral Commission. Specifically, he would like to know exactly how many votes were returned from the Norton Park Holiday Centre, where he says business owners were denied a vote. 'I am not privy to the date the voting papers were alleged to have been delivered to all the business rate payers, because we at Norton Park did not all get them,' he said. 'I had never heard of the Dartmouth BID until June 21 when many Dartmouth small business people suddenly got hot under the collar over the levy that is required to be paid by all business rate payers to fund the project. Unfortunately, the organisers did an imperfect job in publicising the consultation process, administering the voting and setting the levy scrupulously fairly. Mr Payne, who lives in Stoke Fleming, is now mounting a campaign for an amendment to national legislation 'to stop something like this happening again'. He believes the way the election results were reported by Dartmouth BID as percentages rather than actual numbers of votes was misleading. 'This election return and establishment of Dartmouth BID may well be legally binding under current statute law and regulations, but it certainly was not a fair democratic election,' he said. 'Neither was the way many of the small closed electorate were not informed properly about the project before the ballot took place. It begs the question was the election properly audited by the Electoral Commission?' Mr Payne pointed out that while South Hams Council had waived its levy collection fee for the first year, it would be getting back £6,500 in revenue per year from the fee it would be charging the BID in years two-to-five – with the added promises that improvements will be made to the town. He said he believed much of the BID initiative would mainly benefit the larger tourist centred businesses in down-town Dartmouth. 'The best I can hope for the Dartmouth BID initiative is that there can be further public consultation, hopefully a re-ballot if the Electoral Commission audit declares it flawed, a review of the levy anomalies and a revised programme with which most people are comfortable,' he said.