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

Nomination forms must include an indication of support for the candidate from 100 electors registered on the local government electoral register for a voting area within the police area.1 These are known as subscribers – the first two are the proposer and seconder, while 98 other electors are the assenters to the nomination. There is nothing preventing a candidate from subscribing their own nomination provided they are registered in the police area. 

The proposer, seconder and other subscribers may be registered anywhere in the police area and there is no limit to the numbers of subscribers from any one voting area, e.g. they may all be registered in one voting area or may be registered in different voting areas across the police area. 

Each subscriber is required by law to sign the nomination paper in the appropriate place and their electoral number must be included in the spaces provided alongside their signature, along with the polling district’s identifying letters.2   

Once a nomination form has been formally submitted, even if it is later deemed invalid, the signatures of the subscribers will still count towards the one form that the subscriber may subscribe.

If, after you have determined a nomination, an elector is later removed from the register or dies before the election (or even before the nomination is delivered) their signature remains valid and the nomination is not affected.

A person who is shown on the register as being under 18 years old at the time of nomination can only subscribe a nomination form if they will be 18 years old on or before polling day.3  

Only the required number of signatures for your police area on any nomination form can be considered. If more subscribers are included than the number required to stand for election in your police area, any subsequent names must not be considered at all. If one of the first of the required number of subscribers is invalid, irrespective of whether more subscribers have been added to the nomination form, the nomination must be held invalid.4

Signatures on nomination forms, once given, cannot be withdrawn by subscribers. If a subscriber contacts you to say that they wish to withdraw their subscription, you should inform them that this is not permitted by law and that the subscription remains valid. You must reject a nomination if the nomination form is not subscribed as required. 

Checking subscribers are on the register

Subscribers must appear on the local government register for a voting area within the police area that is in force on the last day for publication of notice of election. It is essential that the correct version of the register is used for checking that the subscribers are valid. 

You will need to liaise with the local ROs/EROs across the police area to ensure that you base your determination of the validity of subscribers on the relevant register update. 

Any nomination forms delivered subsequently bearing that elector’s signature as a subscriber must be determined as invalid, even where the later nomination form is for the same candidate as the earlier form, or if the earlier nomination form is for a candidate who has subsequently withdrawn.5  

Our guidance for PAROs on working with Electoral Registration Officers provides more information on planning for the checking of subscribers. 

As you must accept the nomination form at face value, you must accept that the signature made on the nomination form is that of the person listed on the register under the relevant elector number, even if the signature suggests another name. You may draw the attention of the person delivering the paper to the issue if you are concerned, but you must take the elector number and the signature at face value.6 If after having raised the issue you still have any concerns, you should raise these with your SPOC.

Crossed out subscribers’ names

Occasionally a mistake is made with the subscribers on a nomination form, and one or more of the names may be crossed out on the form. If the signature and elector number for a subscriber are clearly crossed out, you should ignore it and treat it as if that row did not appear at all. If asked, you should advise that any crossings out should be clear and, ideally, initialled. 

You should not cross out any entry. If the entry that has been crossed out was that of a proposer or seconder, then the new proposer or seconder must be indicated. Where an entry has been crossed out, the first signatures from the required number of subscribers for your police area excluding that entry must still be valid for the nomination to be valid.