Guidance for Returning Officers - Assistance with voting for disabled voters

As RO, you should proactively use local data available to inform your decisions about the additional support and equipment you provide at polling stations to enable or make it easier for blind, partially sighted or disabled voters to vote independently and in secret.
  
More information on accessing and using data held by your local authority about disabled residents can be found in our guidance on communicating information directly to disabled voters.

However, you may receive requests for additional support or equipment to be provided, beyond those that you already have or are planning to put in place.
 
For example, you may be informed by a voter with a particular type of impairment that they remain at a substantial disadvantage (i.e. a disadvantage that is more than minor or trivial) despite your adjustments, as they have additional needs.
 
In such instances, as part of your duty under equalities legislation you must consider the request and decide if it is reasonable to provide additional support and/or equipment to remove the substantial disadvantage the voter has identified and brought to your attention. There is no set process in law for how you will determine what equipment is reasonable. The Equality and Human Rights Commission publishes advice about making reasonable adjustments in the workplace. While not written specifically for Returning Officers, it may be useful in helping you determine whether is it reasonable to make an adjustment.  

Each request must be considered on its merits and with a view to continuing to support the right of every voter to be able to cast their vote. When making your determination about whether it is reasonable to make an adjustment, you should keep an audit trail of any decisions and discussions held especially where you have sought advice from colleagues with expertise in equalities legislation.

There are a range of factors you should take into account, including:

• whether providing the additional support or equipment that has been requested will enable or make voting easier for disabled voters?
• your ability to provide the additional support. For example:
  • is the equipment readily available for purchase, loan or hire?
  • are the cost implications reasonable?
  • are there any more cost-effective or readily available alternatives?
  • is the equipment single-use or can it be used for future polls?
• is the requested equipment portable and can it be transferred to another polling station if required (for example, due to a last-minute polling station change)?
• are there any training implications to consider in order for staff to provide the required support or to support the use of the equipment?
• have you engaged with individuals at your local authority with expertise in equality, diversity and inclusion for advice?

You are not required to grant every request for additional support or equipment, but you must be able to demonstrate that you have given every request proper consideration using fair, objective and consistent criteria. You should also keep sufficient information about requests for future planning purposes and to enable you to review the effectiveness of your provision for disabled voters.
 
You should decide how you will inform a voter about the outcome of your decision, particularly if you have not been able to meet their request but are able to offer alternative options. You should also provide them with more information about the equipment and support that is available at the polling station and work with your polling station staff to ensure they proactively offer support to the voter.
 
You should be aware that any decisions you take may be subject to legal challenge.

Retention of information when contacted by a disabled voter for additional support or equipment 

Where you are contacted by a disabled voter asking for additional support or equipment, you may receive sensitive special category data about that individual and their specific needs. You will be considered the data controller for this sensitive data and it is your responsibility to ensure that you manage the processing of that data in line with data protection requirements including ensuring that the individual is aware of how their data will be processed.
 
You should also ensure that any information collected from a disabled voter leading to a decision on requests for reasonable adjustments can be kept for the purpose of being applied to future polls and, if appropriate, sharing with the relevant ERO. You should develop and add into your retention policy a process and timescale for reviewing these decisions.
  
You should take advice from your Data Protection Officer about what to do with the data once processed and whether you need to update any relevant privacy notices. Our data protection guidance for Electoral Registration Officers and Returning Officers contains more information on managing special category data.