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

These are some of the key factors you will need to consider in deciding how to organise and manage the verification and counting of the votes in your combined authority area: 

• Consistency of approach: local ROs and their staff will have past experience of running election counts in their area and will have their own processes and workflows that they are used to following. While this knowledge and experience will be useful in helping to decide how best to organise and manage the verification and counting, you should consider how you will ensure consistency in the approach to verification and counting across the combined authority area, regardless of where the processes are to be carried out.
• Staff resources and availability: The identification, recruitment and training of sufficient, capable staff to conduct the count will also be a key consideration. For example, depending on the geography of the combined authority area it may be more difficult to recruit the necessary numbers of suitable staff to work in a central location than it would be to recruit people to work at a venue closer to their home, who are also more likely to be experienced staff who have worked on election counts in the past.
• Deployment of staff: You should also consider how to make the most efficient use of staff. If count staff are in one (or several) central locations they can be deployed flexibly to maximise productivity in the interests of a timely outcome to the count. If staff are at separate local count centres it is likely that count staff in some areas may have completed the process while others are still counting. You will need to consider how to ensure that the count arrangements enable all constituent authority areas to complete their counting within a reasonable time of each other.
• Venues: Any venues used will need to be of a sufficient size and capacity to accommodate the necessary processes and staff and enable processes to be carried out effectively and in clear view of those entitled to attend, taking into account potential media attendance at the declaration of the result. Local ROs will already have venues (and reserve venues) that they have used in the past and are familiar with, along with the verification and count workflows and layouts that work for these venues. If you are using a central venue, the scale of the space needed will depend on the size of the combined authority area and number of electors. You will also need to identify and put in place contingency arrangements, which may include identifying suitable venues of an equivalent size and capacity in case of the loss of a venue.
• Transmission of local totals: Local ROs need to transmit their local totals to the CARO/CCARO to enable the combined authority area result to be calculated . You will need to ensure that you provide instructions on the method to be used for transmitting the information accurately and securely, and carry out a test of the process in advance. There are greater risks with this process if counting is carried out locally, for example, as a result of technical issues. You would need to develop contingency arrangements to be deployed in the event of technical problems occurring.
• Security: You should work with local ROs to ensure the secure, safe and effective delivery of the verification and count process. As part of this local ROs will have undertaken risk assessments and may have put in place the necessary security measures to manage attendance at verification and the count, such as requiring attendees to show ID and bag checks before being allowed entry, and this can include Commission representatives and accredited observers. 
• Logistics: You should ensure that ballot papers are stored securely at all times. This will be an important consideration in any proposals that would require ballot boxes to be transported to a central venue, or between venues after being verified. You should consider carefully the potential security risks associated with the transportation of ballot boxes and the associated logistical challenges, including how to ensure that where polls are combined the correct ballot papers for each poll are in the right place so that all ballot papers can be included in the appropriate count. 

Your decisions as to when, where and how the votes are to be verified and counted should be taken in accordance with the principles and considerations set out in this guidance. Once you have made your decisions you should consider how best to ensure that local ROs’ plans for managing and resourcing their verification and counting processes will achieve these principles in practice.