Postponement of determination of Voter Authority Certificates and Anonymous Elector's Document applications
When more than one relevant election or petition is scheduled to take place close to another in the same electoral area for which an ERO is appointed, the processing of all applications received after the deadline for the first poll or petition but before the deadline for the following poll or petition are postponed for a period of time.
This postponement period begins from 5pm, 6 working days before the first poll or last day for signing the petition and ends at 10pm on the date of that poll or at the time a petition closes on the last day for signing the petition.1
Where the deadlines for a relevant poll and petition fall especially close together (for example you have a poll on Thursday and the last day for a petition is on Friday in the same week) then the postponement period ends earlier - on the working day before the previous poll or last day for the petition.2
This is to enable an application to be determined and a Voter Authority Certificate or Anonymous Elector’s Document to be processed and issued in time for the elector to use at the subsequent poll.
Where an application is received during this postponement period you must not determine an application before the postponement period ends and must notify the applicant as such.3
While you may not determine any applications received during this period, you can still take all of the necessary steps to verify the application in readiness for determining it once the postponement period ends. You will need procedures in place to ensure that you do not send any documents before the postponement period ends.
When you have postponement periods which will only end very close to the next polling day or last day for a signing petition, this will result in determination taking place after 5pm 6 working days before the poll or petition. In these cases, in addition to processing any applications for a Voter Authority Certificates in the standard way, you may also produce temporary Voter Authority Certificates if needed to ensure that everyone who applied in time for a particular poll or petition is able to participate.