Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25

Looking back over the last twelve months, there is a lot to celebrate about the health of UK democracy.

Not long after the delivery of local elections across England, a general election was called. As ever, the electoral community swung into quick action.  

After four years in this role, I remain inspired by the commitment and professionalism of electoral administrators. They are the unsung heroes of elections, going above and beyond to help voters in their communities participate and make sure their voices are heard.  

The general election saw high numbers of voter registrations and absent vote applications in a very short time frame, and over 30,000 polling stations were booked.  

There continues to be immense pressure on the electoral administration system in terms of capacity and timeframes, and we saw some voters face challenges receiving their postal votes in time to participate. These are areas that continue to need attention, but our evidence shows that the vast majority of voters were able to take part and successfully cast their vote.  

Candidates, political parties and campaigners hit the ground running once the election was called, endeavouring to get their message out to as many voters as possible. It was a lively and robust campaign. As well as hearing their pitch, it’s important that voters know where the money is coming from so during the campaign we published weekly updates on the donations received by parties to ensure real-time transparency.  

However, a dark cloud over the campaign was the level of abuse and intimidation of candidates that played out. Our research after the polls found that over half of candidates experienced some form of abuse, with women and ethnic minorities particularly targeted. This is an issue that must be addressed, or we risk putting people off standing in the future. The Commission is committed to working with the Speaker’s Conference, partners, including the police and social media companies, to support and improve the experience of candidates.    

Despite the challenges and room for improvement in the system, the delivery of a general election that commands the confidence of voters, and where the results are accepted by all and trusted, is always something to be proud of and celebrate.    

That said, a number of the challenges that were evident at this election, coupled with the data and evidence we’ve gathered from voters, parties, candidates and administrators, point to a number of threats and risks to the system that need to be addressed  

We have spent a considerable amount of time this year analysing the research and engaging with our stakeholders about what they see as the concerns and opportunities for the coming years  

We have pulled that evidence and insight together to develop our new Corporate Plan, which is our blueprint for seeking to address these challenges over the next five years  

Our priorities during this period are increasing voter access, modernising the system, addressing threats, leading an informed debate on changes, and building the Commission’s resilience  

We will work closely with a range of partners, including UK governments, electoral administrators, civil society organisations, political parties and police in order to achieve our goal over the coming years.

We have set ourselves ambitious targets, but we feel these reflect the importance of maintaining trust and engagement in our democracy  

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the progress we’ve made over the period of the previous Corporate Plan. A key aim of it was to strengthen the relationships and support we offered our stakeholders by working closely with electoral administrators and building on the service we offered our regulated community; these efforts have produced positive results that provide a good basis for further improvement.

I am proud of the work and impact of the Commission’s activities over the last year, which has been achieved thanks to all the work of Commission staff, partners and the wider electoral community. I look forward to undertaking the next exciting chapter together.  

John Pullinger CB 
Chair

Over the past year, a huge amount of work went into ensuring the smooth running of the general election and May polls. It is always remarkable to see the electoral community coming together to achieve this: a fundamental bedrock of our democracy.

Once the general election was called, the Electoral Commission also moved at pace to begin its important work of raising awareness and ensuring voters had the information they needed to take part. We launched voter registration and voter ID public campaigns, and we were pleased to see the high levels of registration and ID awareness as a result.

For a proper democratic choice, voters need to be able to judge the material from campaigners seeking to influence their vote. At the start of the campaign the Commission published new advice for voters on how to engage confidently with campaign material and think critically about what they saw or heard. There had been concerns ahead of the election about the role of mis- and dis-information and whether malign actors would try and mislead voters. We were pleased to see that risk didn’t materialise to any large scale – but it’s one we have a close eye on.  

As always, we offered advice and guidance to electoral administrators and the regulated community to ensure they were supported and able to meet their responsibilities.  

After the election, we gathered a wide range of evidence to assess how it went. Based on research with voters, candidates, campaigners and electoral administrators, we concluded it was well-run and maintained the confidence of voters. However, we did find a number of areas where improvements are needed. We recommended a number of changes to ensure the system is delivering for everyone, including around improving postal votes, abuse and intimidation, voter ID, the process for overseas voters, and candidate nominations.  

The Commission has been working closely with government and parliamentary committees to secure support for these changes, and others to address weaknesses in the system. This includes working with the Speaker’s Conference and the Defending Democracy Taskforce to tackle the concerning issues around candidate security, abuse and intimidation, with a wide range of partners on deepfakes, AI and mis/disinformation, and with our key international partners to ensure we learn from their elections, challenges and ideas.  

We have also been building our work with young people, so they have the confidence and knowledge to participate in democracy. This is an area of work we plan to expand further given the importance of engaging future generations of voters, particularly if votes at 16 is introduced across the UK.  

The security and integrity of political finance is one of the main concerns of voters. We have published information about millions of pounds of donations and spending to ensure voters have transparency. We have set out a clear set of changes needed to address the vulnerabilities in the system that undermine voter confidence.  

These are all themes that we are prioritising in our new Corporate Plan, agreed by the Speaker’s Committee, the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament, which reflects the range of projects that we plan to deliver over the next five years to improve the health and integrity of our democratic systems.  

Strengthening the Commission itself is one of our five priority areas. We have been doing a lot of work to ensure we have the right systems and support in place to improve our performance, particularly in finance, IT, procurement and project management, in order to deliver our corporate plan successfully.    

This year the ICO concluded their investigation into the 2021 cyber-attack on the Commission. It’s clear that we didn’t have sufficient protections in place then. They noted the measures put in place since and welcomed the steps we’d taken. We have invested heavily in our digital infrastructure and cyber security to protect against further attacks, and are working with political parties and others to ensure that the UK’s democratic data is protected. We think our democratic processes are critical national infrastructure.  

The Commission continues to invest in its people and places, ensuring we have the right skills and resources to deliver our ambitions. As ever, I am grateful for the support and expertise of Commission staff. Their work over the last year, including on the general election, showed yet again what a dedicated group of people they are, committed to promoting and protecting UK democracy.  

I look forward to the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. But I’m confident that, together with partners across the electoral community, we will ensure that everything we do helps people to trust, value and take part in elections.      

Vijay Rangarajan  
Chief Executive