EA Bulletin: 411 England

Once nominations for the polls on 1 May 2025 close on 2 April, and you know the details of the candidates standing for election in your area, you should re-visit your risk register and review your plans accordingly, including any arrangements you have made regarding candidate security.

As mentioned in bulletin 408 England, you should be working with your local force electoral official adviser (FEOA) and make arrangements to provide them with the contact details for all candidates standing for election.  This will enable the FEOA to provide up-to-date security information and advice directly to candidates.

With the publication of the Statement of Persons Nominated for the May polls, you should also review and remove any historic election notices still available on your website, to prevent any confusion and help to ensure any previous candidates’ personal details are not still available.

As always, if you have any issues or need any support, please contact your local Commission team. 

As set out in bulletin 407 England, nine local authorities have been accepted to take part in the government’s priority devolution programme. As part of this scheme, some councils will also be developing proposals to move from a two-tier system to a unitary system of local governance.

To support teams going through a programme of local government reorganisation, we have published some initial planning guidance. Whilst the details of the new authority structures are still being developed, this guidance aims to support your initial planning for the new authority arrangements and early considerations for the polls in May 2026. You will need to work with colleagues in other electoral services teams from councils forming the new authority, whilst continuing to deliver your day-to-day electoral service functions in your existing local authority.

As additional information becomes available, we will update this guidance and will inform you of any changes through the bulletin. If there are any aspects that you would like more support with in particular, please get in touch with your local commission team. 

As highlighted in bulletin 410 England, the final date for new parties, or new names, descriptions or emblems, to be added to the register was Monday 31 March 2025. We will not be processing any changes to the register until the 7 April 2025.

We have created a summary of any updates or changes to party names, descriptions or emblems made since 28 March 2025 below.  

We have created two new spending returns which we are trialling at this year’s local elections in England. Agents will have option to use these forms rather than the existing form, so you may have them submitted to you. Please share our new forms with prospective candidates and agents in your area as you see fit. 

The first is a ‘nil return’, designed to make it simpler for candidates who incur no spending and receive no donations. This would be submitted instead of the normal return, but the candidate and agent declarations will still be required as usual. You can find the nil return form here, on our website.

The second is a new structure of the Excel form, which includes more automation, for example to calculate the spending limit and the various subtotals. Although it is designed to be completed electronically, it can be printed and submitted as a hard copy.  

Our new excel form will be available on the Resources page of the guidance shortly.

As you know, at each set of elections, the Electoral Commission collects key administrative data from Electoral Registration Officers and Returning Officers. This data provides important evidence to support our work in reporting on elections across the UK.  

We will collect the data using our usual data portal. From Friday 2 May 2025 you will be able to log on to the data portal and fill in data. You will receive an email to your electoral services email address with details on how to log on/reset your password on 2 May 2025.  

We will be collecting the core administrative data for the local elections as usual and for the first time, we will also collect data for all the Combined Authority Mayoral elections. The deadline for completing this data will be Friday 30 May 2025.  

For local authorities that want to return voter ID data, we will collect this via the same data portal (this will be set up for the same VIDEF data as we collected in 2024). It is entirely optional to complete this data. If you do choose to collect and return the ID data to us, the deadline is also Friday 30 May 2025.  

For full details on the data we are collecting, see the complete list (there are separate tabs for the core administrative data -one each for local elections and CAMs) and the optional voter ID data. If you have any questions about the data collection, please contact [email protected] . 

Polling station staff survey  

We are carrying out a survey of polling station staff to collect feedback about their polling day experiences. We would appreciate your help in highlighting the survey to your polling station staff.  

There will be two ways for staff to access the survey:  

• The polling station handbook (hard copy and digital) features a QR code which staff can use a smart phone to scan to access the survey.  

• We will provide a link to the online survey closer to polling day which you can circulate to your polling station staff. In both cases, the link to the survey will go live on the afternoon of polling day. If you have any queries about the survey, please contact [email protected] .

Feedback from electoral administrators  

We would also like feedback from administrators and Returning Officers responsible for running the polls. This not only informs our post-election reporting but will also help us to improve how we support you in delivering well-run elections in the future. As usual, we will provide a link to the survey closer to polling day. If you have any queries about the feedback survey, please contact [email protected] .

As laid out in bulletin 409 England, The Electoral Commission are hosting advice surgeries for candidates and agents.  

This is a reminder that surgeries will take place on 8, 9 and 10 April 2025. If you are aware of any potential candidates and agents who may benefit from attending this advice surgery, please forward this information to them.  

Please contact [email protected] with any questions.

If you would like to register, please complete this form.