Guidance for the GLRO administering the GLA elections

For the mayoral nominations you will need to have access to the registers for all London boroughs in order to check whether the subscribers are valid and that subscribers have subscribed only one nomination paper within Greater London.

You may either collect register copies from all EROs in your area so that you can carry out the checks yourself, in which case you would need to decide whether you will receive the registers in hard copy or in data form. Alternatively, you may wish to delegate the checking to individual EROs, requiring them to confirm to you whether the subscribers are entitled to subscribe the nomination paper.

Candidates will require access to the electoral registers to:

• complete their nomination form
• help them campaign
• check that donations are permissible

The Commission has produced template electoral register and lists of absent voters request forms that candidates can use.

You can find detailed information on access and supply of the full electoral register and absent voters lists to candidates, registered political parties (who can request a copy at any time) and others in the access and supply section of our guidance for EROs. 

You will need to ensure your plans outline the processes and safeguards you will have in place regarding the transfer and security of the data included on the electoral registers.

You should start discussions with the EROs at an early stage about how this can best be achieved in practice. You will need to take into account any practical issues related to managing registers if they have been produced by different software suppliers.

If there is a need for exchanging data electronically, you should agree the timings for the exchange of data and ensure that a test of the process is carried out ahead of the first scheduled transfer. You should ensure that data protection is considered and that any transfer of data is secure.

You can find more detailed advice on storing personal data securely and maintaining your document retention policy, including what it should contain, in our guidance on Data Protection. 

You will also need to ensure there is an agreement in place between you and each ERO for secure data transfer and destruction of data. Although data protection legislation does not require a written agreement when sharing data between data controllers, it is strongly recommended that you agree a data sharing protocol with the EROs.

There will be updates to the data at a number of points within the election timetable, as the ERO must publish two interim election notices of alteration as well as the final election notice of alteration.1 We have published a timetable containing the dates related to the publication of these notices.