Combined Authority and Combined County Authority Returning Officer guidance for Combined Authority Mayoral elections

As CARO/CCARO you are responsible for all aspects of the nomination process at the combined authority mayoral election. Your project plan should include details on how you will engage with political parties, candidates and agents and how you will manage the nominations process.

It should be straightforward for those campaigning to participate in elections. As CARO/CCARO you are responsible for putting in place an effective communication plan. You should work with local ROs to co-ordinate engagement with candidates and agents across the combined authority area, and put in place plans to ensure that candidates and agents are provided with relevant information in a timely manner. You should plan for candidate and agent briefings early in the election process.

You should consider if there are any specific local circumstances or local information that your local ROs may want to communicate such as the timing and location of postal vote openings and the count, any security measures that will be in place and whether this will form part of your communications or if the local ROs will provide information relevant to their areas.

You should take steps at an early stage to estimate how many candidates might stand for election as this can have a significant impact on various elements of the electoral process, including the printing of ballot papers, nominations, the management of candidate election addresses and production of the booklet, as well as the verification and count. In order to develop this estimate, and to keep it under review, you should make early contact with political parties, monitor any expressions of interest and, in due course, monitor requests for nomination packs.

There may be a significant number of new or less experienced candidates, agents and political parties who are unfamiliar with the practices and processes of standing for election and who will need your support to be able to participate effectively. It is therefore important that you engage candidates, agents and parties as much as possible so that they receive all the information they need in order to stand for election and they can have confidence that the processes are well-managed.

It is vital that all candidates know what they need to do in order to stand for election, what the spending limits are, how they can obtain the electoral registers and what the restrictions are on the use of the registers, including data protection considerations. One difficulty likely to be faced by CARO/CCAROs is that those intending to stand for election do not always make contact with the elections staff before submitting their nomination papers. You will therefore need to consider how you are going to raise awareness and promote the availability of information and briefings to all candidates and agents before they complete and submit their nomination papers.

You will need to have discussions with local Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to determine how you will obtain copies of the electoral register to candidates and what your approach will be for the required candidate subscriber checks during the nomination period.

You will need to ensure that the requirements as to the content of candidate election addresses are complied with, alongside the procedures for submitting those addresses. You will also need to plan how you are going to manage the process of producing and distributing the mayoral booklet.