Guidance for Candidates and Agents at Senedd elections

Candidate spending is spending on activities that you use to promote your candidacy, or to criticise other candidates, during the regulated period.1 This includes:

• spending incurred by the candidate or agent 
• items or services bought before the regulated period that you use during the regulated period2
• notional spending, where something is provided for you and made use during the regulated period
• local campaigning, where you have authorised someone other than the candidate or agent to incur spending

To be candidate spending it must:

• be an activity on the list of types of election spending
• promote the candidate3

What is spending to promote your candidacy?

If an activity is aimed at voters in your constituency to promote or secure your election, then it is spending to promote your candidacy. This spending must be reported.

Where you use an item of spending purely for the purposes of your campaign, you should report all the costs in your return.

In some cases, not all the spending on an item will be used to promote your candidacy. For example, where:

• only some of the items or services used to promote you are used during the regulated period
• you are sharing items or services with another candidate

In these cases, only a proportion of the costs will be reportable.

Please see Splitting reportable and non-reportable spending for guidance and detailed examples of splitting these costs.