Where there is a joint campaign, all of the spending on that joint campaign counts towards the spending limit of each of the non-party campaigners involved in the joint campaign.
Ordinary joint campaigns
If non-party campaigners work together as part of a joint campaign without a lead campaigner, we call that an ‘ordinary joint campaign’.
If you are a non-party campaigner in an ordinary joint campaign, you must record the combined regulated spending on the joint campaign as it will count towards the spending limits for each non-party campaigner involved, including yourself.
If you do not submit a notification, you cannot spend more than more than £10,000 during a regulated period on regulated campaign activity, including joint campaign spending by your joint campaign partners.
If you are a registered non-party campaigner involved in a joint campaign and you spend more than the reporting thresholds, you must report your own spending on the joint campaign. You do not have to report the spending by your joint campaign partners, but that spending does count towards your regulated spending total. You should report a total of what your partners spent on the joint campaign.
Example
You and another non-party campaigner each agree to spend £8,000 on an ordinary joint campaign in Scotland. The total spending for the joint campaign is therefore £16,000.
Both of you must count £16,000 towards your regulated spending total.
Since this total is over £10,000, which is both the notification threshold UK-wide and the reporting threshold in Scotland, you and the other campaigner must submit notifications to the Commission before spending over this amount. As you are planning on spending over the reporting threshold, the notifications cannot include the reporting threshold declaration.
Each campaigner must report their own spending in their spending return. They should also report a total of their joint campaign partner’s spend.