The timing of your data matching exercise is not prescribed and may change year on year. You should factor the exercise into your year-round registration planning considering:
whether you have scheduled elections, and what type of elections they are
other administrative elector contact points, such as the annual canvass, to avoid elector confusion
your local demographics and under-registered groups, such as student populations and when they would take up residence in your area
what data is available and is most relevant to you. Things to consider include:
how recent and accurate the data is – when it was last updated and whether it is regularly maintained. Some data will be most useful at certain times of the year - education data will be most accurate at the start of the academic year
the format of the data and whether it will need to be processed before you can use it
the size of the data sets available, whether they cover the whole of your area, and if you have other sources available for matching purposes
Duration of data matching exercise
You will need to plan for the duration of your data matching exercise. This may depend on the demographics, churn and size of your authority, the resources you have available to you, and how much processing the data will require to be ready for matching.
The types and duration of processing required will depend on:
whether you can import data sources into software to enable matching
what data will be essential for the matching to be accurate
how much manual data manipulation will be needed
what resource you have available to you to do this
Evidence from the auto registration pilots conducted in 2025/26 indicate that you should allow a minimum of eight weeks for this process.
You should seek advice from your local authority data protection officer about accessing local data and whether any additional written agreements are required between the ERO and the data controllers of the different data sets you need to access.