Guidance for Petition Officers

Due to the nature of a recall petition, it is likely that you will have a short timeframe to plan for the delivery; you should therefore consider how you can include some of the key deliverables at a petition into your routine planning, review of election activities and review of polling districts and polling places.  

For example, after an election when you evaluate the staff used at polling stations, you could establish who would be able to work for longer period of times, and also at short notice.

You should also ensure that your general contingency planning includes arrangements for delivering a recall petition in your constituency.

Venues

You should pro-actively identify possible locations for signing places, taking into account the following:

• the length of the signing period - as signing places need to be available for the full six-week period
• if you decide to extend the signing period into evenings and weekends, the venues also need to be available and accessible at those times
• the short notice between the petition date being confirmed and start of the signing period
• the need for privacy particularly given, during the petition period, it is an offence to publish a statement that could indicate that an individual has signed the petition or not
• that some venues may not wish for their premises to be used, due to the political nature of a recall petition

You could also consider different venues from those that you ordinarily use at elections and which are central and accessible, such as shops and banks. 

It would be good practice to include the suitability of a venues to be used as signing places when you undertake your review of polling stations following an election and at your statutory polling district and polling place review.

If your electoral software allows, you could set up a test petition, where you are able to allocate polling stations as signing places so that you are familiar with this process.

Ensuring venues are accessible

As part of your review of previous electoral events, you should have undertaken an evaluation of the accessibility of venues used. The results of this should be used to inform your identification of suitable venues and to ensure that any known barriers to access can be overcome. You will need to assess any new venues that you consider could be used as signing places, which are not designated polling places, to ensure that the venues are accessible for all electors.

Under the Equality Act 2010, service providers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to avoid putting disabled people at a substantial disadvantage compared to people who are not disabled.1 You should work closely with experts on access to premises or facilities for disabled people in order to comply with the duty. The equalities officer at your local authority should be able to provide you with advice and assistance. More information is also available in our guidance for Returning Officers to assist disabled electors with voting.

Staffing

To prepare for employing staff for a recall petition, there are a number of actions you can incorporate into your general planning considerations:

• when reviewing your staffing following an election, you could establish which staff members could be available for a longer time frame
• proactively create a staffing list of those who may be able to commit to a longer time frame
• work with internal part-time colleagues who may be able to fulfil staffing roles at the signing places

Liaison with the ERO

You, as the PO are, responsible to compile the petition register.2 Early discussions with the relevant EROs will ensure that you are able to obtain the required information from the EROs in a timely manner.

Whilst in most cases the PO and the ERO will be the same person, this will not be the case in Scotland nor where a constituency crosses local authority boundaries, so early discussions with the relevant ERO will assist with any preparations for a recall petition.

EROs should also familiarise themselves with the requirements for a recall petition, including the publication of notices of alteration and absent vote arrangements.

EROs should work with their EMS software supplier to understand the process to capture the register to be in force for a recall petition, which could include setting up a separate test petition register, to enable them to supply you with the relevant data.