Delivering the annual canvass - England

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Should recent additions be excluded from the national data match step?

You have the discretion to decide whether to exclude some or all of your recent additions from the national data match step.1  

Recent additions are electors who have made a successful application to be registered and have been added to the register of electors within the last 90 days. 

Deciding what your recent additions threshold should be

Prior to the start of the national data match step, you should decide where to set the cut-off point for recent additions to the register to be included in the national data match.2 This period must be between 0 and 90 days. 

When the data is uploaded for the national data match, any recent additions to the register prior to the threshold date you have set will be excluded from the data match and automatically marked as matched within your EMS.

  • If you set a threshold of 0 days, all recent additions will be included within the national data match step. 
  • If you set a threshold of 90 days, recent additions made within the last 90 days will be excluded from the national data step and automatically marked as matched within your EMS.
  • If you set a threshold of between 0 and 90 days, recent additions to the register within your chosen time frame will be excluded from the national data match step. For example, if you choose to set the threshold at 45 days, recent additions to the register in the last 45 days will be excluded from the national data step and automatically marked as matched within your EMS.  

Your decision to include or exclude recent additions from the national data match step could have an impact on the outcome of the data match results. In turn, this may influence the canvass route you allocate for each property.  

The questions below may help to inform your decision about whether to exclude all or some of your recent additions from the national data match step.

QuestionsImpact on your decision
How stable is your electorate? 
Do you have a high level of churn within your electoral area?		If you have a high level of churn in your area, there is a increased risk that someone may successfully register to vote at an address but then move again in a short space of time. Where this is the case you could consider setting a lower threshold which may help to better capture changes in areas where electors move more frequently.
Have you checked against locally held data sets that the information you hold for properties identified as having recent additions have no other changes?If you have carried out checks as part of your activity to maintain the register throughout the year, you could consider setting a higher threshold. You may be more likely to have already captured and managed recent changes and so your local data may be more up to date than DWP records.
Do you have processes in place to regularly identify and subsequently take steps to remove existing registered electors from a property if they have moved out?In this case, you could consider setting a higher threshold, as you are more likely to have actioned recent changes and so your local data may be more up to date than DWP records.
Have you had to process a high proportion of changes during previous canvasses?If this is the case, you could consider setting a lower threshold as your recent experience suggests that you are less likely to have captured all required changes outside of the canvass period. 
 

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government help sheet below provides further information and guidance to help you set your threshold.

Cabinet Office helpsheet - Recent additions and determined electors

You should review the impact of the threshold you set after each canvass to determine its effectiveness, and ensure any lessons learnt are fed into your planning for subsequent canvasses. 

Last updated: 12 September 2024