A man has accused Kirklees Council of causing capital offence when it comes to printing surnames on the electoral register.
Iain McFalls, of Shelley, was not amused when he found a spelling mistake on names like his which start Mc.
Instead of Mc a new council system prints the prefix MC instead, which could cause problems when people apply for loans or credit.
Iain, who lives in Park Avenue, has now demanded that the council resolve the glitch which has led to the first c in all names that should read ‘Mc’ being capitalised and the following letter turned into lower case.
The new system, called Individual Electoral Registration, which replaces the traditional household registration, was introduced in June and inclusion on it is useful when applying for credit, a mobile phone contract, loan or mortgage.
Iain, whose name now shows as MCfalls instead of McFalls, said: “Over the years my name has been spelled correctly but when I rang the council to report the problem they said that there was an error in this new system.
“I’ve looked in the phone book and there are four pages of people listed with the Mc surname in the area, so it is affecting quite a number of residents.
“It’s not just annoying to see. The exact details on the electoral system are used by the finance industry when applying for services such as a loan, so it could cause problems.
“They are responsible for checking that they have entirely the correct information but at the moment they are disseminating inaccurate details.
“Who knows how many people it could be affecting around the country in places where the same system is now in place?”
Sainsbury’s Bank website states that credit scores can sometimes be adversely affected by easy to remedy factors such as “an incorrect address or the misspelling of a name on the electoral register.”
The Scottish prefix Mc, which traditionally means the son of, is shared by thousands of people living in England.
A spokeswman for Kirklees Council said they were looking into the complaint.
She added that the elections department had said that the system will be updated on Monday to deal with the upper and lower case problem.
