Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-05-06.

To ask the Deputy Prime Minister, what comparative assessment he has made of the data matching levels of those electoral registration officers who (a) did and (b) did not use local government data matching in the Individual Electoral Registration dry run.

Greg Clark

All 380 EROs in England, Wales and Scotland took part in the Confirmation Dry Run in 2013 which involved matching their electoral registers against data held by the Department for Work and Pensions. The average match rate was approximately 78%.

Following this, 138 local authorities conducted data matching against locally held data sources, such as council tax records. On average this increased these local authorities’ match rates by approximately 7%.

The full evaluation of the Confirmation Dry Run, including local data matching activity, is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-confirming-electors-through-data-matching

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