Combined Guidance for Returning Officers at Local Government and Police and Crime Commissioner Elections in England

Candidates must appear on the ballot paper as listed as in the statement of persons nominated.  The PARO will be able to confirm the candidate details which are to appear on the PCC ballot paper after the close of nominations. 

Candidate name 

Candidate surnames must appear in capital letters, including the capitalisation of surnames beginning with MAC or MC and the names should follow strict alphabetisation e.g. MABBOT, MACLEAN, MATTHEWS, MCCORMICK, MORRISON.
  
Where a candidate has listed multiple names as their surname, either hyphenated or not, you should reproduce the whole name as provided. For example Dick Van Dyke would appear as VAN DYKE, Dick on the ballot paper and for alphabetisation purposes their surname would start with a V.
 
Similarly, Ann Smith-Jones would be SMITH-JONES, Ann on the ballot paper and would be listed as an S for alphabetisation purposes. 
 
In all cases, you should use the maximum possible sizes of font. To ensure consistency, the same font size should be used for each candidate on each equivalent line. 

Candidate address

The candidates address must appear in full unless they have requested not to have their home address made public. If the candidate has during the nomination process completed the home address form requesting to withhold their address:

• the ballot paper for the Police and Crime Commissioner election should instead include the words Address in the [insert name of police area] Police Area  
• the ballot paper for the Local Government election should instead include the relevant area in which their home address is situated, or the country if their home address is situated outside the UK 

Emblems

If the candidate is standing for a registered political party and has requested the use of an emblem, you may be provided with a high-resolution copy of the emblem for use in the printing of ballot papers. Alternatively you may need to download the emblem from our website. You should ensure that whatever copy is used is in the same form as the registered emblem. 

The maximum size of an emblem on the ballot paper is two centimetres square.2 Do not alter or distort the shape of the emblem to fit the ballot paper. You should ensure that the emblem is in the same form as the registered emblem – for example, do not stretch emblems into square shapes if they are not registered as square images on our website, as this would have the effect of altering their appearance.