Delivering the annual canvass - England

The council which has appointed you as ERO is under a legal obligation to provide you with the necessary staff to enable you to fulfil your statutory duties.1  

The decisions you have made on your approach to delivering the canvass will impact on the number of staff you may need. You will need to consider how you will resource the following:

Managing the local data matching exercise  
If you are carrying out local data matching, the volume and the timing of this may have an impact on the amount of staff time you will need. You will also need to consider any additional work needed to get the data into useable format for data matching purposes. 

Analysis of the data match results
If you are carrying out local data matching, you should consider the staff resource required to make decisions where national and local data match results conflict. You will also need to consider the staff-time required for the property allocation stage.

Dealing with questions from the public about the canvass process
Establish the staffing levels required by thinking about the timings for your canvass activity across the different routes and identifying the likely peak response periods. Your decision on whether these queries will be managed by a contact centre or by the electoral services team will also have an impact on the amount of staff required.  

Processing responses
You will need to consider the staff required to manage multiple response channels, deal with any conflicting responses and undertake any additional registration activity necessary - for example sending ITRs, undertaking reviews and deletions. 

Hand-delivering communications (where undertaken)
If you are hand delivering canvass communications, you will need to consider the geography and size of the canvass areas. Canvass areas can vary in size to help maximise canvass response rates, allowing you to take into account the varying geography and demographics of different parts of your registration area. For example you may want to allocate fewer properties over larger geographical areas, such as rural locations. The size of canvass areas will also be affected by the staff resource available, the more staff you have, the smaller your canvass areas may be. 

You may wish to review your canvass areas following the allocation of properties to canvass routes in order to ensure that canvassers have sufficient time to contact all non-responding properties/individuals based on the number of Route 2 properties in that area.

You will also need to consider the likely volumes of canvass communications that you intend to deliver by hand. For example, are you hand delivering some or all of the canvass communications and at what stage for each route?

You will also need to consider the impact on staff resource requirements where you are combining hand delivery with a property visit. 

Undertaking personal contact via telephone or property visits
The decisions you have made on how you will carry out the personal contact requirements for Route 2 properties will impact on the size of canvass areas and the staff resource you will need to ensure you maximise the effectiveness of personal canvassing. 

For example:

• the stage of the canvass that personal contact will take place will have an impact on the volume of properties requiring contact. The more properties that require personal contact, the smaller the canvass area may need to be
• the size of the canvass area will be impacted by the number of staff undertaking personal contact attempts by either visit or by telephone 
• if by telephone whether it will be done by your electoral services team, or a contact centre
• the size of the canvass area may depend on how many personal contact attempts you will make, the more attempts you plan to make, the smaller the canvass area may need to be
• if you are combining any follow up of ITRs for individuals within a property with any personal contact attempts the smaller the canvass area may need to be

You will also need to review your existing canvass staff database. You should review the performance of canvassers who have worked on your canvass before and any whose past performance has been unsatisfactory should not be used again.  You should then make contact with those you wish to invite to work on the canvass again bearing in mind that existing or experienced canvassers may not be available and you may need to undertake recruitment to identify and select new canvassers.

Where you need to undertake recruitment of staff to work on any part of delivering the canvass, you will need to take into account the length of time required for recruitment and plan accordingly. You should liaise with your HR contact to ensure they are aware of your requirements and can provide you with the necessary support. You will also need to ensure that your recruitment plans are fully reflected in your canvass plan.