You should identify support staff and ensure they are available to assist with any public enquiries you may receive in the run-up to the election. There may be opportunities to utilise your council’s existing support staff to perform this role.
You should also liaise closely with the EROs to ensure that it is clear how public enquiries across the whole of the constituency will be received and responded to. Whatever arrangements you put in place, you should ensure that they support the delivery of a consistent, high-quality service to all electors, regardless of where in the constituency they live.
The support staff that you utilise should be trained to understand that there are various barriers that disabled electors may face when accessing information or voting in a polling station. Disabled voters may contact you to identify a particular area that they need support within the polling station. You can find more information in our guidance on understanding barriers to voting.
Managing enquiries from the public
You should set up a dedicated team, working with the EROs for your constituency as appropriate, to deal with a range of basic enquiries, such as questions about whether or not a person is registered to vote, postal and proxy voting and the location of polling stations.
Staff dealing with public enquiries should receive training to deal with them and be provided with:
agreed responses to frequently-asked questions
a list of the locations of polling stations
key dates in the election timetable
details for the process in place for the escalation of more complex enquiries to the elections team
We have developed a template of FAQs for front line staff which you can adapt to fit your local circumstances.
You can find the template of FAQs for frontline staff in the planning section of our resources page.
Processing applications
The EROs should consider whether they will need any additional support staff to assist with the processing of registration and absent vote applications in the lead-up to the election – and in particular in the lead-up to the registration deadline 12 working days before the poll. You should liaise with them to understand how they will manage the likely increase in applications close to deadlines, so that all staff involved in the election and the managing of queries have a clear understanding and can inform electors appropriately.
For more information on processing registration and absent vote applications in the lead-up to an election see our guidance on running electoral registration and absent voting.