Electoral register

The Electoral Register is the list of everyone who is registered to vote.

About this service

Electoral registration

The Representation of the People Act 1983 requires electoral registration officers (EROs) to prepare and publish a register of electors for their area each year. It is their statutory duty to include the names of everyone who appears to them to be eligible taking reasonable steps to obtain the required information. A canvass form is sent to each household in the UK every autumn for completion and return by the householder. The form asks for the details of all those eligible to vote (or eligible to vote in the near future) who are resident on 15th October. If an ERO considers someone is entitled to be registered as an elector, they have no discretion to omit that person's name from the register.

Access to the register

The electoral register is, by law, a public document. It is available for inspection to allow members of the public and political parties to check to ensure that all eligible names have been included and that the names of ineligible people have not. This is considered to be an important safeguard against the potential for abuse of the electoral system.

Until 2002, any company, organisation or person could buy a copy of the register. The law has now changed so that electors have some choice about who can buy details of their names and address. Under the changes there are two versions of the register produced: the full version and the edited version.

The full register can be inspected, but copies can only be supplied for certain purposes, such as elections, preventing and detecting crime and to credit reference agencies for credit checks. It is not possible for any elector to have their details omitted from this register.

The edited register is available for general sale and can be used for any purpose. Electors are able to choose not to have their details included in the edited register by marking a box on the annual canvass form, or on the monthly 'rolling' electoral registration form.

Rolling registration 

The Representation of the People Act 2000 introduced voluntary 'rolling' electoral registration to enable people to be added to (and deleted from) the electoral register at any time of the  year rather than on a single date. These arrangements enable those qualified to be registered to contact their local ERO after the annual publication date of the electoral register (1st December) seeking registration at their residential address at that time. Provided the ERO receives such applications by about the middle of a month, applicants' names should be added to the register on the first working day of the following month. The only exception is between September and November each year when the ERO carries out the annual canvass upon which is based the new revised register published on 1st December.