New law comes into force allowing local council candidates to withhold full address from ballot paper
As previously trailed, new rules have now come into force to allow local election candidates to withhold their full address from publication on ballot papers.
To quote the Electoral Commission’s recent bulletin:
Legislation removing the requirement for candidates to have their home address published on the ballot paper and statement of persons nominated at principal area elections and parish council elections has now been made and will apply for all principal area and parish council elections held in England on or after 2 May 2019.
The amendment rules are available to download from the legislation.gov website, and can be accessed from the following links:
- The Local Elections (Principal Areas) (England and Wales) (Amendment) (England) Rules 2018
- The Local Elections (Parishes and Communities) (England and Wales) (Amendment) (England) Rules 2018
… The Statutory Instruments that will remove the requirement for candidates standing at Combined Authority Mayoral and local
mayoral elections have been laid in the UK Parliament, but still need to be approved.
Where candidates choose to use this new right, the council area in which they live will be published instead. This change follows the Committee for Standards in Public Life (CSPL)’s review of intimidation in public life. It brings the law for these contests into line with that for Westminster elections where, fuelled by concerns over personal safety, the law was changed a few years back.
(For the reasons why I’ve changed my mind about this law and now think it is a good idea, see my previous post on the subject.)
If personal safety is the reason for this, it won’t be of much use unless the candidate’s home address can be omitted from the imprints of any published material that goes out during the election. Not all local parties have offices and lots of candidates are their own agent. And the Agent is also at risk having their personal address on the imprint.