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

In order to effectively communicate information to electors you should consider who you want to reach through your awareness activity and the method of communication to be used. You should take advice and seek input from relevant staff at your local authority. You should also take into account any national registration campaign being carried out by the Electoral Commission and seek to co-ordinate activity in your area with the national activity as appropriate. 

Information required by electors in order to successfully participate may include:

• details of the election(s) 
• the date and hours of poll 
• the location of polling stations 
• any key deadlines (e.g. deadlines for applying to register to vote, for postal or proxy votes and for applying for a voter authority certificate)  
• what photographic ID is accepted in the polling station
• how to mark the ballot paper(s)
• assistance available to electors and how to request reasonable adjustments (e.g. equipment to enable disabled voters to vote independently in the polling station) and how to request information in alternative formats (e.g. braille, easy read, large print)
• how and when votes are counted 
• how the result will be made known 

In the lead-up to scheduled polls, the Commission may run a public awareness campaign to encourage registration. Such a campaign will usually involve mass media advertising, working with partners and public relations activities. We will also provide resources that can be used locally, such as posters, online banners, template press releases and social media content. 

We will provide you with information on our public awareness campaigns via the EA Bulletin. We also publish a voter registration newsletter, Roll Call, which aims to help local council communications teams stay up-to-date with the latest campaign information and resources. You and your council communications team can sign up to receive the newsletter here.

You should ensure that all outgoing communications provide appropriate contact details to allow anyone to respond and obtain further information. You should consider what contact details are most appropriate in each case, working with LROs and their staff as required.

You can find further information on Engaging with voters in our guidance for Local Returning Officers (LROs), the production of voter materials for PAROs and quality assuring election materials in our guidance for LROs. The public may also proactively make enquiries and you need to consider how a consistent approach to addressing such enquires can be achieved. You could, for example, consider developing agreed responses to FAQs for front line staff. We have produced FAQs for frontline staff at elections in England which you could use. 

Where is my polling station?’ is a common question in the run-up to polling day and on polling day itself. In partnership with the Democracy Club we provide a postcode search tool on our website. When voters enter their postcode, they are shown where their polling station is, and who their candidates are. You could embed this tool on your own website, using the widget, or add a link to our website.

To facilitate this we need you to send the polling station data for your area to Democracy club. If you are also the LRO once you have finalised your polling stations, you can export the data from your EMS, and email it to [email protected]. Detailed instructions are available for each supplier, if you need them.

We also provide your contact details in our postcode search tool. If your contact details change we ask that you let us know as soon as possible so that we can update our records.