Lord Wills – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Wills on 2014-05-06.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Stowell of Beeston on 9 April (WA 304), whether the range of services to which they refer includes electoral registration.

Baroness Stowell of Beeston

Local authorities are statutorily required to provide a number of services including electoral registration. Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 provides for the appointment of an officer of the council to be the Registration Officer for the registration of parliamentary and local government electors, and section 54 of that Act provides that expenses properly incurred by a registration officer in the performance of his registration duties shall be paid by the local authority by whom the registration officer was appointed.

Additionally, the Government has committed to funding all net costs of the transition to Individual Electoral Registration to ensure that authorities are not left with unfunded burdens in line with the New Burdens Doctrine. In April 2014 the programme paid non-ring fenced section 31 grants to local authorities in England and Wales and paid invoices directly to Scotland to cover core Individual Electoral Registration costs.