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

You should work closely with local ROs in your area to help to inform any decisions you take about how counting and result collation will be organised and managed across the combined authority area. 

You should plan and complete your consultation, dialogue and decision-making in good time, before the formal election campaign period begins, to enable your decisions to be communicated to local ROs so that they can reflect them in their planning for the verification and count. You should also engage with any other stakeholders that have an interest, such as candidates, political parties, voters and the media. 

While you should seek input from those affected or interested to inform your decision-making, ultimately the responsibility for making decisions remains with you as CARO/CCARO.

One of the aspects of the election process where you will particularly want to ensure that there is consistency is the verification and counting of votes and collation of the result. You will need to take a decision when, where and how the votes are verified and counted.

You may choose to hold the count at a central location or allow for counts to be held locally in some or parts of the constituent authorities. However the verification and count are organised, you should ensure that local ROs’ plans will deliver a consistent standard of administration.   

In developing your plans, you should have regard to the Commission’s principles for a well-run verification and count and consider other practical factors that may affect the organisation and timing of the verification and count. You can find more information about the count in our guidance on verifying and counting the votes.    

You should record all decisions regarding the verification and count and communicate these to those affected, bearing in mind that there may be different arrangements in place in different parts of the combined authority area.

If different arrangements will be in place in different parts of the combined authority area, you should ensure that you communicate clearly to candidates and agents, and others who may be attending or observing verification or count processes, which aspects of those processes may differ, and why.

You should put in place robust protocols for the two-way communication of verification and count information between you and local ROs, including verification figures and the communication of local count totals. 

Where the election is combined with another election, effective co-operation between the different ROs across the combined authority area will be vital due to the increased complexity and volume of ballot papers.