EA bulletin: 405 England

Every year we ask schools, youth groups, colleges and universities to join us in celebrating democracy by delivering democratic education with their students and young people.  

Welcome to Your Vote Week will be taking place from Monday 10 March to Sunday 16 March 2025.  

The theme for 2025 is get informed and get involved.  

We have worked with our youth voice champions from across the UK to develop ideas for the theme of Welcome to Your Vote Week 2025.  Young people highlighted being informed and engaging with politics and democracy at a local level as important to them.

This Welcome to Your Vote Week, support young people to access trustworthy information to get informed about politics, democracy and elections, and take the first steps to get involved locally. Whether it’s discovering who represents them in their area, exploring the issues that matter most to them, or making a positive impact in their community, there are lots of ways young people can get informed and get involved.

Sign up now to take part in Welcome to Your Vote Week 2025 and receive free resources ahead of the week to help you get involved.  

Get involved with the week

Hear from young people from Northern Ireland Youth Forum, part of our youth voice network, about why you should get involved with Welcome to Your Vote Week.

If you want to start planning how you’d like to get involved with Welcome to Your Vote Week 2025, our year-round education resources are available on our website to support you.  

What’s next?

Find out more about Welcome to Your Vote Week

If you have any questions about the week, please contact [email protected]. 

As you know, changes to the franchise of EU citizens were introduced by the Elections Act 2022 with the general right of European Union citizens to register, vote and stand in England local government elections and Police and Crime Commissioner elections being removed.  

EROs have been conducting the ECR process to review the eligibility of EU citizens on the register over the last year. The Electoral Commission has a statutory duty to report on the operation of this process. To inform our reporting, we will be requesting ECR data from you in February 2025. You can find more information on the data we are requesting on our website.

The data report will be available to download from your EMS system from the start of February. We will be in touch by email soon to request the data and will confirm at that stage how the relevant reports can be generated.  

If you have any questions about the EUVR data collection, please email [email protected]   

We would like to thank you in advance for your support with this work and for the time taken to supply the data to us. 

The Electoral Commission will be hosting a webinar on 23 January 2025 for interested parties or groups who may be interested in how to register a political party.  The details of what will be covered and how to register for the webinar are set out below.  Please feel free to share the details with any interested parties or local groups in your network who may benefit. If you have any questions or additional information, please do not hesitate to contact [email protected] 

Are you interested in how to register a political party? Sign-up for our upcoming webinar where we will provide a comprehensive overview of the process and key considerations.

The webinar will be held on 23 January 2025. Additional sessions may be scheduled at other times depending on interest.

This session will focus on general guidance rather than specific party structures or individual circumstances.

What to expect:

• a step-by-step guide to registering a political party
• key points to consider during the registration process
•  a Q&A session at the end for general questions

Please note: If you have specific questions about your unique situation, you can contact the party registration team for tailored advice by emailing [email protected]   

Sign up for the party registration webinar

As set out in Bulletin 404, we are now collecting orders for hard copies of polling station handbooks and quick guides for use at the May 2025 polls.

We understand that some of you may be concerned about ordering handbooks while there is some uncertainty about the May 2025 polls.  If you are currently scheduled to have polls next May, please do submit your order as we will not be able to add to orders after the deadline.

If you haven’t already done so, the deadline for completing the online order form is Friday 17 January.

We will be printing to order so it is important that you provide us with your figures by the deadline. Please note that once you have submitted your order form, you will not be able to amend your order yourself. If you need to make any changes to your order, please contact [email protected]   

We will confirm the timing of the delivery of the hard copies in a future Bulletin.  

As we approach the May 2025 polls, we are collecting information from all local authorities who have polls. We appreciate that there is some uncertainty in the electoral sector around the May 2025 polls. Until we understand more about the government’s plans, we will continue to operate on the basis that the 2025 elections will take place as normal. Therefore, we still need to collect this information from you. This year, we have designed and distributed two surveys. One for Returning Officers, and one for County Returning Officers. 

This information is necessary for us to clearly understand the arrangements in place for the delivery of polls and how local authorities plan to deliver the outcomes of the RO Performance Standards. Survey responses also help highlight where we can offer support and provide key statistics that can answer enquiries from the media and elsewhere.      

The surveys cover areas such as public awareness, risk management and resourcing for the May 2025 polls. The deadline for completing the surveys is Friday 24 January 2025.    

If you are an RO or CRO and have not received an email with a link to the survey or have any questions regarding the surveys, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]      
 

We’re currently developing our new five-year UK Corporate Plan. As part of this work, we’re taking the opportunity to update our values and vision statement. A well-developed set of  values and vision statement will define what we stand for, and help guide our decision-making, culture, and interactions with partners and key stakeholders.

We want to get your views on the Electoral Commission, our role, and the core principles that should guide our work. Your input is crucial in helping us develop values that help us project our ambitions and build confidence in the Commission and our work.  

If you would like to share your thoughts and be involved in shaping these new values and vision, please get in touch with Tim Crowley at [email protected] , who will respond with the next steps.