Guidance for Local Returning Officers administering a Police and Crime Commissioner election in England and Wales

You must issue postal votes to electors as soon as is practicable.1  In practice, this means any time after the details to be printed on the ballot papers have been confirmed, i.e. after the deadline for withdrawals, which is 4pm on the last day for the delivery of nomination papers.2

The early dispatch will maximise the time available for electors – especially service voters and those who have requested that their postal ballot pack is sent to an overseas address – to receive, complete and return their postal vote. You can find more information in our guidance: Issuing and distributing postal votes.

You many only issue a postal vote to someone who has been added to the electoral register and has made a successful application for a postal vote. The ERO is required to publish two interim election notices of alteration before publishing the final election notice of alteration on the fifth working day before the poll.3 This supports the dispatch of postal votes at an early stage in the timetable to those electors who have applied to register close to the registration deadline. More information is available in our guidance for EROs in England and Wales. 

If you are not also the ERO, you should liaise with them to obtain the postal voters’ list and the postal proxy voters’ list as soon as possible after the publication of the first interim election notice of alteration to include these electors in the initial dispatch of postal votes.4 This notice must be published on the day of the deadline for nominations.5

You will also need to liaise with the ERO to obtain any subsequent updates once the second interim election notice of alteration and the final election notice of alteration have been published. 

You can find further information on interim notices of alteration in our guidance for EROs in England and Wales.

Our template election timetables for PCC elections also include the relevant dates for these notices:

Deadlines for absent voting applications and requests to change existing arrangements 

The deadline for electors to submit new postal and postal proxy applications is 5pm, 11 working days before polling day.6 This is also the deadline:7

• to cancel existing postal votes
• for electors to make changes (i.e, amending the delivery address) to existing absent vote (i.e. postal, proxy and postal proxy) arrangements

If, however, an elector is an existing postal voter and has already returned their postal ballot paper, they cannot make changes after that time, even if this is before 5pm, 11 working days before polling day.8  

The deadline for new proxy applications (not postal proxy), excluding emergency proxy applications, is 5pm, 6 working days before polling day.9

The deadline for emergency proxy applications is 5pm on polling day.10 You can find more information in our guidance: voting by emergency proxy. 

This table summarises the deadlines for easy reference:

The ERO will provide you with the final absent voters’ lists, i.e., the postal voters list, the postal proxy voters list and the list of proxies, after the deadline for applications has passed. 

Where a completed registration application is made by the deadline but the applicant’s identity cannot be verified against DWP records or through local data matching, the ERO has until the determination deadline, which is six working days before the poll to receive the required evidence from the applicant under the exceptions process and make a determination.

Where the applicant has also applied for an absent vote by the relevant absent vote deadline, the absent vote application also requires verification of identity and where identity cannot be verified against DWP records, the ERO has up to and including polling day to receive the required evidence or necessary attestation from the applicant and make a determination. 

An absent vote cannot be granted until both the registration and absent vote applications have been positively determined. The postal vote will then need to be dispatched, and the voter will need to receive, complete and return their postal vote by 10pm on polling day.