Question

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, what advice the Electoral Commission gave to Electoral Registration Officers on (a) maximising the registration of home movers and (b) sending voter registration forms to all households.

The Electoral Commission provides comprehensive guidance to Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to support them in maintaining accurate and complete electoral registers. This guidance sets out the actions EROs should take to identify potential new electors, such as by making use of local data - including property databases - and partnership work.

The Commission also provides a range of public engagement resources and templates that can be adapted locally, some of which are specifically designed to help EROs target home movers.

Additionally, to supplement the work being carried out by EROs, the Commission has developed partnerships with a number of organisations that home movers are likely to come into contact with - such as mortgage advisors - to use their communication channels to promote voter registration.

In 2014, Household Enquiry Forms (HEFs) – which are designed to identify who is living at a property and eligible to register so that the ERO can invite them to register to vote – were only required to be sent to properties where no electors were registered, or where the ERO believed there may still be other people living at the address who were not registered.

This means that home-movers have not been captured as effectively as they would have been during a typical annual canvass where all households would receive a form. The processes followed in 2014 were unique in this regard; canvass activity in 2015 and all subsequent years will involve sending household enquiry forms to all properties to check who is resident at an address and to identify new electors who can subsequently be invited to register, and carrying out follow up activity as required.

To address this gap, the Commission has strongly recommended that all EROs write to all households in their area ahead of the May 2015 polls to check that they have accurate information on who is registered at each address and to prompt those who are not yet registered to apply now. The Commission has welcomed the provision of additional funding by the Cabinet Office, which has helped EROs to do this.

The Commission has provided guidance to help EROs carry out this activity, and also developed and made available a template ‘household notification letter’ that they could use. The Commission has also run online paid-for-search advertising to support this activity.

All EROs have confirmed that they have been or will be carrying out this activity or other comprehensive activity which seeks to address the issues identified by the Commission’s analysis of the 1 December registers, which are set out in full in the report which was published on 24 February and is available at: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/182375/Analysis-of-the-December-2014-electoral-registers-in-England-and-Wales.pdf.

Early feedback from EROs where the activity is now well advanced has indicated that it has had a positive impact on boosting the number of registration applications received.