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

There are a variety of ways in which verification and counting can be organised across the police area, and you will need to decide which is the best option for your police area, based on the combination of polls, whether deputies have been appointed, your local circumstances and those of the LROs and, where relevant, other Returning Officers in your police area. 

At a standalone PCC election, LROs are responsible for the verification of the ballot paper accounts and the counting of the votes for their voting area, unless you have reserved that responsibility for yourself by notifying the relevant LROs.

On completion of the verification procedure at a standalone PCC election, LROs must inform you of the contents of the verification statement i.e. total number of ballot papers counted.1

If the votes are counted at a different venue to where verification takes place, LROs must seal the verified ballot papers in packets with contents lists and send them, along with the ballot paper accounts and the verification statement, to the count venue.2 You may direct LROs to carry out further additional verification procedures once these documents have been delivered to the count venue. 

Where polls are combined, you will need to liaise as early in the planning process as possible with your project team and decide the way the verification and count will be organised in your area to achieve the more effective and transparent process.

Where the poll at a PCC election has been combined with the poll at another election, the relevant Returning Officer will be responsible for verifying the ballot papers at all polls. The LRO will, however, remain responsible for the counting of the votes for their voting area. Therefore where polls have been combined, you should liaise with the relevant Returning Officer to ensure consistency in the verification across the police area.

Where polls have been combined, you will need to obtain the verification statement from the relevant Returning Officer to enable you to check the local count totals against the verification statement and identify any potential variances. LROs must also inform you of the contents of the statement of local count totals, once it has been prepared.

You can find more information about verification and count in our guidance for LROs on managing verification and managing the count. 

There are two broad options for organising the count processes for the PCC election in the police area: 

• Individual local counts and the central collation by the PARO: This option would see the verification and counting of the votes take place in local count venues, with the local totals forwarded to you at a central hub. In this case, you would need to ensure that the process in place for the transmission and receipt of totals from each LRO to the central hub is capable of establishing a clear audit trail, is timely, and supports the development of an accurate result.
• Central police area count: There are two main variations of a centralised count: a count where votes are verified locally before being transferred to a central counting venue, where all of the votes for the police area would then be counted; or a count where votes for all voting areas are both verified and counted in one central counting venue. 

There are, however, variations within these two options and the potential for other ways of organising counts within a police area. For example, across a police area some local authority areas could count locally, while others come together and hold counts on a more centralised basis.

You should liaise closely with the LROs in your area when deciding on the approach. In areas where the poll at the PCC election is combined with the poll at another election, you should work closely with the relevant Returning Officers to agree an approach. Whichever option is chosen, there will be risks and benefits associated with it. You will need to identify these when you develop your proposals for consultation and, once a decision has been made, work with LROs (or the relevant Returning Officers in case of combined polls) to plan how you will manage and mitigate the risks.