Guidance for Petition Officers

Your project plan should cover the identification of suitable venues for all processes, and you should ensure that this is done as early as possible, especially for signing places.

Signing places

You will not need to identify as many signing places as you would polling stations at an election. You can designate up to 10 signing places.1 You will need to ascertain the availability of your preferred signing places early on in your planning as they need to be designated as soon as possible after being notified of the petition.

You should consult your scheme of polling places which you have used at previous electoral events and assess their suitability. You will also need to ensure that any signing places are accessible for disabled voters.

When checking for their availability you will need to emphasise that the signing place needs to be available for a six week period and outside of the core signing period of 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday.

In England and Wales, schools that are publicly funded, including academies and free schools may be used as signing places free of charge.2  

In Scotland, schools, excluding independent schools, may be used as signing places free of charge.3  

You are also entitled to use, free of charge, any publicly–funded room.  

You will, however, need to pay for any lighting, heating etc. costs incurred when using such rooms as signing places. 

Postal signing sheet issue and opening venues

You should draw on your plans from previous electoral events when selecting venues for postal signing sheet issue and opening and deciding on the appropriate number of sessions to hold. 

In deciding how many opening sessions to hold over the period, you should bear in mind that there is a longer period for people to return their postal signing packs than the usual period for returning postal ballot packs at elections. 

Regular opening sessions will help you to confirm to people whether you have received their postal signing sheets and statements4 and enable you to identify where people have already returned a postal signing sheet, and are therefore not permitted to make changes to their absent signing arrangements, even where this is before the deadline for making amendments. 

Your first opening session should be held within a couple of days of your first issue. Even if you have not received a high number of returned postal signing sheets by then, you should still conduct a session at that time and take the opportunity to test your equipment and assess your workflows under real conditions. 

You should also plan further opening sessions around expected peaks of returns following subsequent issues of postal signing packs. 

Count venue

You should draw on your plans from previous electoral events when selecting the venue for counting the signatures. 

Although the count process is more straightforward than at an election, you will need to put arrangements in place to enable you to deliver an accurate count in which everyone has confidence. Our verification and count guidance contains a number of points for you to consider when planning for the count.