Lord Wills – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Wills on 2014-01-24.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, of the £108 million allocated in the 2010 Spending Review to cover the costs of introducing individual electoral registration, how much was spent in (1) 2010–11, (2) 2011–12, and (3) 2012–13; and how much is planned to be spent in (1) 2013–14, and (2) 2014–15.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire

The spend to date and budgeted amounts are in the table below. The budget for the transition to Individual Electoral Registration (IER) was set in 2010, based on robust cost projections and included optimism bias in line with best practice. Careful management of budgets, combined with an agile approach to the development of the IT supporting the move to IER has helped to ensure that, to date, the programme has come in under budget.

The budget for IER has supported three rounds of pilots since 2011 and a complete national test of the IT that will support the automatic confirmation of at least 78% of current electors. It has enabled the allocation of resources to Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and partner organisations (£4.2m in the current financial year) to improve the completeness and accuracy of the Electoral Register.

For financial year 2015/16, £148 million has been set aside for the costs of Individual Electoral Registration, the General Election and the 2015/16 Boundary Commission; specific budgets for each of these areas are yet to be allocated.