Board minutes: 16 September 2025

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting, including Sam Hartley as an observer. Sam will assume the role of Director, Policy, Research and Voter Engagement on 1 October. 

Apologies were noted from Commissioner Stephen Gilbert, Michael Coldwell, Interim, Head, Governance Risk and Assurance, and Zena Khan, Senior Governance Adviser. Antonia Merrick was taking minutes.

The Chair reported that Stephen Gilbert had resigned from the Board of the Electoral Commission as he had taken up a paid position with the Conservative Party. Stephen will write to His Majesty the King to tender his resignation. It was noted that Stephen had done an excellent job at Commissioner for seven years. 

Convene refresher workshops with Commissioners had occurred during the previous week with good engagement on use of the annotation function. 

There was one new declaration of interest from the Chair who had taken up the post of Deputy Chair at the Nuffield Foundation. 

The Chair welcomed Andrew Simpson, Head, Digital, Information, Technology and Facilities (DITF) Team, and his team to present on the regular Meet the Team slot.  

The Head, DITF explained that the team oversees IT infrastructure, cyber security, data management and facilities and had recently rolled out new laptops and meeting room improvements. The team had also implemented improvements to the Belfast and Cardiff offices and was working on the Edinburgh office. It was acknowledged that they had delivered much in two years and had recently achieved Cyber Essentials Plus Accreditation. The Heads from the team then gave an overview of their areas.

There was a discussion around AI, deepfakes and the Polling Station Finder project. The team was working with ACE (Accelerated Capability Environment) at the Home Office and other entities on deepfake. A pilot would run in May in the Scottish, Wales and local elections. Office 365 and CoPilot are being heavily used. The Digital Products Manager and the Learning and Development team are working on training programmes from mid-2026, followed by continuous improvement. The Board would be kept abreast of false information reports as the Welsh and Scottish Elections approach. 

Action: Elan Closs Stephens will share the work Bangor University is doing on Welsh language AI with the Head, DITF

The Chief Executive reported that, since the last Board meeting, Angela Rayner and Rushanara Ali had left the Government. Steve Reed had recently been appointed as the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities & Local Government and a meeting had been requested. Samantha Dixon  is the new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Building Safety, Fire and Democracy with oversight of elections and a meeting was planned.

The Ukrainian delegation visit went very well in August, and the Memorandum of Understanding was signed. Work is now underway with the support of local authorities, the Foreign Office and MHCLG mapping where Ukrainians are based in the UK. The Four Country Conference had been postponed due to unavoidable external factors.

The statements of accounts deadline of 31 August were met by all parties apart from Labour who would be publishing late and may therefore be subject to enforcement penalties. 

Media work had increased. This included an interview with the BBC on the 2022 cyber-incident, focusing on the time and cost of the security breach. The new level of Cyber Essentials Plus Accreditation was made clear at this interview. The Guardian interview with the Chief Executive on democratic education had been well received. 

There was a good discussion at the Westminster Party Panel on 2 September. The last two or three Panels had been very constructive.

The Chair attended the Reform Party Conference. The priority for the Commission will be to understand party operations as the new structure continues to be established. 

There will be a DDTF (Defending Democracy Task Force) meeting in a couple of weeks’ time where thinking would start on the May elections and plan for JESP (Joint Election Security and Preparedness Unit). 

The key priorities for the executive are the May elections and the forthcoming legislation.

The Director, Electoral Administration and Regulation updated on the Elections Delivery Steering Group (EDSG) meeting the day before, focusing on the successful delivery of all polls. EDSG look at all aspects of elections planning, including but not limited to, electoral administration, guidance and public awareness campaigns. The Commission will need to have the right balance between overseeing issues on polls and supporting individual polls in Scotland, Wales, and England. It will also be important to have good relationships with police forces. Work is on track with a raft of new guidance to be published in November. Training plans for parties, candidates and agents are being developed with the help of an external agency, with valuable feedback received so far. EDSG is piloting work on deepfake detection, building upon learning from the May polls. There will be a focus on safety and security at local government elections. More clarity is needed on local government reorganisation. The Directorate is working on tailored training, including bespoke Treasurer training. . 

Mid-year performance reviews were underway. 

The Corporate Director reported that there is a significant contingency in the budget. The organisation is growing at pace although below the forecast headcount, due to internal promotions and the need to backfill. Discussion focused on the drawdown mechanism used for the devolved offices.

One colleague will observe the elections in Norway with a focus on outside interference and deepfake.

The All-Staff Event in 2026 will take place on Wednesday 17 June in Cardiff at the National Museum of Wales. The Board meeting will take place at the Pierhead building in Cardiff on Tuesday 16 June 2026. 

The Board extended its thanks to the Interim Director, Policy, and Research for doing an excellent job as he returns to his substantive role.

Board agreement was sought on the final Welsh and Scottish bids for 2026/27 and to review the draft Westminster bid for 2026/27.

Associated letters are being drafted to the appropriate committees which will be shared with Commissioners for Scotland and Wales.

The cost for Wales had reduced now that Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) had been removed, with the approval of the Wales team. A supplementary estimate might be needed once the AVR approach is decided and words to this effect will be included in the letter for Wales. The Commissioner for Wales agreed with this approach. It remains uncertain what will happen with AVR, and this had not yet been discussed by MHCLG and Government. That said, four AVR pilots are being run in Wales.

Resolved: That the Board agreed the Welsh and Scottish bids for 2026/27. An update on progress of Westminster bid would come to the November meeting.

The presentation on Voter Education was the second in the series of deep dives into the major projects subject to enhanced assurance. There had been a useful discussion from a risk perspective at the previous day’s ARAC meeting. 

The project had a significant financial investment of £800k this year and a business case to support additional spend had been approved. 

Phase 1 will start this academic year with different approaches being piloted. Phase 2 will run in the following academic year and will be launched at Welcome to Your Vote Week in 2027. Support came from a cohort of partnerships, including but not limited to: Northern Ireland Youth Forum, Shout Out UK, Skating Panda, and the Association of Colleges. The Commission are building a teacher training module for democratic education. 

Votes at 16: the team is working with external comms and a panel of Westminster MPs. 

Media literacy is needed in schools along with the need to encourage critical thinking to protect young people from mis and disinformation and build resilience for pupils and teachers. External communications will be especially important. 

It is important to build discussions about politics into other activities - gardening events were given as an example - as people will not be as interested in events focusing only on democracy and politics.

DBS training would be needed and the Commissioner with responsibility for Northern Ireland asked for assurances around the need for a different approach in Northern Ireland, especially in rural schools. Partnerships would be key in Northern Ireland.

There was a discussion around educating parents and other adults in the home through this work. This could benefit certain communities, especially diverse communities in London. Lessons learnt from Wales demonstrated that school recruitment was hard and high participation could not be assumed.

The Board agreed the minutes of the meeting held on 24 June and noted the Commissioners’ annual declarations of interest.

The Chair of the former RemCo updated on the Committee’s business from the meeting of 15 September 2025. The meeting started with a closed session on Employment Relations cases. This included trends around probation touchpoints and performance reviews. RemCo had received a new regular opening report from the Corporate Director setting the scene, which was welcomed. There was a project closure report on the Pay Review which confirmed the pay award had been agreed and implemented. There had been a discussion on the relationship with the union, which is good overall. The EDI Lead had updated on the EDI action plan and that the EC had been shortlisted for the Engage Award.

Resolved: It was agreed to change the name of RemCo to People, Culture and Remuneration Committee (PCR) from the next meeting in December, the new name being more reflective of the Committee’s remit.

Stephen Gilbert having stepped down, the Chief Executive provided an update on the meeting of the Audit and Risk Committee (ARAC) held on the 15 September 2025. As detailed in Section 4 of these minutes there had been a discussion on risk relating to education work. The auditors had set out the status of their audits and that the Accounts are unqualified this year. The strategic risk register was approved and there was agreement over the risk appetite statement which would be recommended to the Board in December. ARAC also discussed procurement and cyber security. 
The Governance Framework annual update.  

ACTION: As the Board could not access the document on Convene, Governance Framework to be added to the forward plan for inclusion at the November Board meeting

Annual Schedule of Policies were agreed. The Chair questioned if there should also be a policy on performance to support the well as the Performance Guide on Echo

ACTION: The Corporate Director to consider and discuss with the Head, HR whether a separate performance management policy is required in addition to the current guidance on Echo.
There will be a Board Development session at the next Board meeting in November. This is good practice, and a skills survey will be re-run. There was a discussion around the AI training and Donations Gaps training in the diary for October 2025. Thinking would continue around Commissioner training, skills, and experience

There being no further business the meeting ended at 12:11 pm

Tuesday 25 November 2025, 9.30 am, in person and by conference.