Senedd election 2026: Party spending

Who is responsible for party campaign spending?

A party’s registered treasurer is usually responsible for making sure that the party follows the laws on campaign spending.1  However, if a party has registered a campaigns officer, this person is responsible for campaign spending instead.2

You can appoint deputies to help with some of your responsibilities. You can do this on PEF Online or by using Form RP5.

Authorising and paying campaign expenses

Only the responsible person registered with us, their deputies, and people authorised in writing by the responsible person can incur and pay for party campaign spending.3

By ‘incur’ we mean making a legal commitment to spend the money. For example, someone may be authorised to spend money on particular items, or up to a particular amount.

You incur election spending when you enter a transaction with a supplier and become liable to pay for the item, goods or service they have provided to you. For example, you hire a printing company to print leaflets, or you sign a contract to rent an office.

Payments are often incurred and paid at the same time. For example, if you buy something online or in a shop. 

Sometimes spending is incurred before it is paid. For example, if you engage an events company to run your manifesto launch, the spending is incurred when you engage their services. The payment is made later, once they invoice you after the event.

Spending by or on behalf of the party promoting party list candidates will count as party campaign spending.4  Accordingly, these expenses must be authorised by the responsible person.  

These laws are in place to make sure that you can be in control of your party spending and accurately record and report it. It is important you have sufficient processes in place to allow you to keep track of spending.

You should make sure that your volunteers and campaigners know who can and cannot incur and pay costs.

Parties with accounting units

Your party may have accounting units registered with us, such as constituency parties. Although they report their accounts separately, accounting units remain part of the party. 

Any spending by or on behalf of an accounting unit is spending by the party.5  It must therefore be incurred and paid by someone authorised by the responsible person and must appear in the spending return along with receipts for any items of over £200.6

Any transfer between accounting units, or between an accounting unit and the central party, is an internal transfer. This includes for example any gifts, loans or sales.

This means it is not possible for an accounting unit to donate to the central party. Instead, this would be the party moving around its assets internally.

Similarly, if an accounting unit provides or transfers something to the central party for use in the campaign, this is not notional spending. This is because, since the accounting unit is a part of the party, it cannot provide or transfer anything that the party does not already own.

In this situation, the central party would be using something it already owned. Therefore, if it was the first time the party had used it, the spending would count as party spending in this election – see Use of items.