Birmingham Liberal Democrat leader John Hemming is threatening legal action over what he claims is the city council's failure to tackle postal-vote fraud at the forthcoming General Election.

The prospective parliamentary candidate for Yardley, who is also deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, is demanding to be told the names and addresses of all people in the city who have applied to vote by post.

Liberal Democrats intend to carry out door-to-door inquiries to check that the applications are genuine. But Coun Hemming (South Yardley) said he has had no response to his request from council chief executive Lin Homer, who is the returning officer. He may seek a judicial review in the High Court if the register of postal voters is not made available to him.

Returning Officers are only obliged to hand lists of postal voters to nominated election candidates. Coun Hemming remains a prospective parliamentary candidate.

He says a delay in handing over the list until his formal nomination is confirmed would waste time and make it difficult to identify postal-vote fraud before a likely General Election. Coun Hemming said: "If the Returning Officer was serious about preventing fraud then she would hand over the list of postal voters to all political parties now so that we can have the maximum amount of time to check those on the list."

An election court, in Birmingham, has been hearing allegations that thousands of votes were fiddled during last year's city council elections.

The court was told that fraudsters unlawfully applied for postal votes on behalf of electors and had the ballot forms delivered to safe houses where they were filled in to favour Labour candidates.