This includes the cost of the election agent or any other person working for the candidate’s election. You must include all staff costs, such as the staff member’s gross salary, any additional allowances, and your national insurance and pension contributions as their employer. This also includes any renumeration, including allowances, you provide to receive their services.
Staff monitoring social media and other press activities
It includes the cost of staff engaged in the management and monitoring of social media channels or platforms and the obtaining of data to allow targeted campaigning. This includes hiring staff to analyse and sort the data and the cost of staff to monitor and post or respond to any kind of social media or other account.
It includes the cost of staff engaged in the management of press activities of any kind, including staff who are liaising with, managing or monitoring any kind of media activity by any means in connection with the candidate’s election.
Volunteer time
You should not include the cost for services of an agent or any other person who is a volunteer.
You should not include the costs of people’s travel, food and accommodation costs while they campaign on your behalf, if they meet the costs themselves.
However, any expenses you meet for them, or reimburse them for, such as transport or accommodation, do count as your spending.
Sometimes you may not be sure if someone working for your campaign is a volunteer or if you should count their time towards your spending limit. For example, they may offer similar services professionally to the ones they are performing for you.
For example, they will be a volunteer if:
their employer is not paying them for the time they spend on your campaign
they are using their annual leave
where they are self-employed, you won’t benefit from any professional insurances they hold
If they use specialist equipment or materials, it is likely that the use of these, provided for free will be notional spending.