Guidance for Returning Officers administering a Senedd election

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Identifying and training support staff from your local authority

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 local authority’s existing support staff to perform this role.

The support staff that you use 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 on understanding barriers to voting in our guidance.

In the case of a constituency that covers more than one local authority you should liaise closely with any ERO’s and appointed deputies at any other local authorities 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.

Managing enquiries from the public

You should set up a dedicated team 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 enquiries from the public should provide this service equally in English and Welsh. You will need to work with the EROs in your constituency (where they are not also the RO) as appropriate to facilitate this.

Staff dealing with public enquiries should receive training to deal with them and also be provided with:

  • agreed responses to frequently asked questions
  • a list of the locations of polling stations
  • key dates in the election timetable
  • details of 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 in English and Welsh which you can adapt to fit your local circumstances.

You can find the template FAQs for front line staff in the planning section of our resource page.

Processing applications

The ERO 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 elections – and in particular in the lead-up to the registration deadline, 12 working days before the poll.1 You should liaise with any EROs in your constituency 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.

More information on processing registration and absent vote applications in the lead-up to an election can be found in our guidance on running electoral registration and absent voting.

Last updated: 18 November 2025