Running electoral registration - England

Applications can be made at any time, and you should process all applications as soon as possible. There are, however, deadlines in legislation by which proxy vote applications must have been received in order to apply at a particular poll.

Deadlines for the receipt of proxy vote applications at polls are statutory. There can be no extension to the deadlines for any reason. Proxy vote applications received after the deadline for a particular poll cannot be accepted and must be disallowed for that poll, and the elector notified of the fact.4  

If, however, it is an application for a definite or indefinite period going beyond the poll, and the application meets all the prescribed requirements, the elector should be advised they missed the deadline to be given a proxy vote for that poll but that their proxy vote will be in place for future polls. If the application is refused, you must notify the applicant of the decision and the reason for it.5  

Recall Petitions

A person is entitled to sign a petition by proxy if they have been granted an application to vote by proxy for a definite or indefinite period at parliamentary elections before 5pm on the cut-off day (3 working days before the first day of the signing period).

Where a person has been granted an application to vote by proxy for a definite period and that period expires during the signing period of a particular petition, that entitlement to vote by proxy is deemed to end at the expiry of that definite period.6  
 

Calculating deadlines 

Deadlines are calculated in working days by excluding Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays.

Bank holidays that apply when calculating proxy voting deadlines are ones that apply anywhere across the area in which the election as a whole takes place. So, at a UK Parliamentary general election, a bank holiday in Scotland will also apply in England and Wales. The only exception to this is where the proceedings at a UK Parliamentary general election in a particular constituency are commenced afresh because a candidate has died. In this case, only the bank holidays that apply in the affected area will be included in the calculation of the proxy voting deadlines. 

However, at UK Parliamentary by-elections and local government elections, only the bank holidays that apply in the area that has the election must be taken into account.7