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

You should prepare a project plan and a risk register, treating each as a ‘living document’ and use them to both monitor progress and manage risks. You should use these documents to:

• set out what you want to achieve, and how you will measure success
• evaluate the planning and delivery of any previous polls, and use your findings to inform your planning
• liaise and seek input from Local Returning Officers (LROs) in your area in developing your risk register and ensure that they are aware of any risks you have identified, as well as any mitigations
• set up a project team
• set up a communications plan to support consistency in the delivery of the election across the police area
• establish a schedule of regular meetings with LROs
• cover how you will co-ordinate any public awareness activity across the police area
• establish a communications network involving a representative of each LRO to help share information and co-ordinate activity
• ensure where possible that any communication activity is co-ordinated with any national activity and any Commission registration activity or campaigning feeds into your plans
• ensure stakeholder communication is embedded throughout your planning, with particular arrangements in place for working with local or national media

The key objective of implementing project and risk management processes is to ensure that adequate preparations are made in advance of the poll, with risks identified and properly managed, so that the poll can be delivered effectively. 

You should set out at an early stage what you want to achieve and what success would look like for you, and this should be reflected in the objectives and success measures set out in your project plan. You should work with LROs in developing these objectives and success measures and ensure that they also reflect these in their own plans.

Project plan

You should prepare a project plan in relation to your functions as PARO, keep it under regular review and use it to monitor progress. If you are also an LRO, you may choose to integrate some or all of this into your wider election planning documentation. 

Your planning should ensure that:

• voters are able to vote easily and know that their vote will be counted in the way they intended 
• it is easy for people who want to stand for election to find out how to get involved, what the rules are, and what they have to do to comply with these rules
• everyone can have confidence to participate safely in the electoral process
• everyone can have confidence in the management of the process and the result

We have produced a template project plan that you may wish to use and adapt to fit your local circumstances. The template includes a number of example deliverables and you should also add in any other deliverables and tasks you identify as necessary, including ones specific to the circumstances in your police area.

Before starting your detailed planning, you should set out what you want to achieve and what success would look like. Your project plan should include clearly defined objectives and success measures. 

Your project plan should cover contingency planning and business continuity arrangements. The continuity arrangements should include provisions to cover loss of staff and loss of venues during the election period.

You should ensure that your plan covers the potential for the Police and Crime Commissioner election to be combined with unscheduled elections in parts or all of the police area.

Your project plan should also identify the resources and staffing required. You should take all necessary steps to ensure that the local authority makes the necessary resources available to you to enable you to discharge your functions. 

Risk register

You should prepare a risk register which should also be a living document and kept under regular review, especially at key points in the process when you have more information about the context of the election, such as at the close of nominations and the registration deadline. You should use your risk register to monitor the risks and document any changes in risk, as well as ensuring that mitigating actions are identified and are being taken forward, including by LROs where appropriate.

Your risk register should identify:

• any difficulties and problems that may occur, and the actions taken to mitigate them.
• the seriousness of any risk by indicating both the likelihood of the risk occurring and the impact of the risk if it did occur. 

Your risk register should consider risk and risk management in relation to your functions as PARO, plus any key risks relevant to the administration of the poll across the police area.

In developing your risk register you should ensure that you liaise with and seek input from LROs as necessary, and that they are aware of any risks you identify that may directly affect the election in their voting area, as well as any mitigating actions for which they are responsible. 

We have developed a template risk register that you may wish to use. The template provides some example risks and suggestions for mitigating those risks. In addition to the risks identified in the template you should also identify any other risks, including ones specific to your police area, and how you would mitigate those.

Security

Your project plan should include a review of security arrangements with the local police. You should also consider any security risks as part of your contingency planning exercise and include these in your risk register.

If you are printing the ballot papers yourself, your security arrangements should prevent unauthorised access to or use of the ballot papers during all stages of the production process and storage between printing and delivery to LROs.