News story

Completing the move to Individual Electoral Registration

The government has announced that the transition to Individual Electoral Registration (IER) will complete at the end of 2015.

This was published under the 2015 to 2016 Cameron Conservative government

At the end of 2015, the electoral registers compiled under the old household registration system in December 2013 will stop being used. Moving to the new electoral registers will mean that all out-of-date and inaccurate entries are removed.

IER will prevent fraud by enabling government to verify that everyone on the register is who they say they are. This will result in greater trust in the legitimacy and fairness of elections.

To ensure the transition is completed smoothly, the government will make an extra £3 million available to local authorities. Through this funding, local authorities will be able to clear inaccurate entries from the register by the end of the year.

1.9 million entries from Individual Electoral Registration are still to be transferred to the new electoral registers. However, as the Electoral Commission has already pointed out, it is likely that many of these entries will be redundant.

Almost 90% of voters were registered automatically on the new system without having to do anything, and a total of 96% of voters have already transferred to the new system.

Updates to this page

Published 16 July 2015