Election Expenses Toolkit

If you stand as a candidate in a local election or local by-election it is a legal requirement to submit a set of formal Candidate Election Expense Returns once the election is over. These returns detail the amount of money that has been been spent on the campaign during the regulated election period – and how that money has been used. They provide legal proof that the campaign did not incur costs in excess of the legal spending limit in the election.

Even if no expenditure was made during the campaign to promote a candidate – a set of expense forms still need to be submitted.

The below toolkit will help you fill out your expense returns by the legal deadline and is broken down into the following sections:

• Paperwork and Deadlines
• The Expense Limit
• Explanatory Notes
• Donations
• The Law
• Running through Your Expense Forms

Paperwork and Deadlines

The Regulated Period

Your Election Expense return covers all spending used to promote the candidate during the regulated period of the election. This is the day after the date you officially become a candidate and ends on polling day – which for the 2023 Local Elections is 4 May.

The latest point for the notice of election being published for the May 2023 local elections is Monday 27 March. You will become a candidate on this date if you, or someone else such as a member of staff or colleague, have declared your intention to stand – for instance on literature, in a press release, at a public meeting etc.

ALDC advise that you consider yourself a candidate from the earliest possible date – and record all spending thereafter in your expense return. This makes the process much simpler and protects against any challenge that might be made over when you were declared a candidate.

If your intention to stand has not been announced at the start of the regulated period you will formally become a candidate on either the date that you submit your nomination papers, or the date that you do announce your intention to stand if that is earlier.

In the May 2023 Local Elections nominations close on Tuesday April 4 2022 at 4pm. This is the latest date you can become a candidate however you should not leave it until the last day to submit your nomination paperwork.

Paperwork

Your Candidate Spending Return form must be printed and submitted physically. You cannot send it electronically.

• The formal Candidate Election Expense Return paperwork for England and Wales Principal Authority local elections can be downloaded from the Electoral Commission website here. An electronic version of the form can be downloaded here. When complete this would need to be printed and physically submitted.
• The formal Candidate Election Expense Return paperwork for Scotland Principal Authority local elections can be downloaded from the Electoral Commission website here. An electronic version of the form can be downloaded here. When complete this would need to be printed and physically submitted.
• English Parish and Town Council elections have distinct paperwork that can be downloaded here.
• Wales Community Council election expense returns can be downloaded here.

Some Councils may issue older or slightly different forms. The legal requirement is that you submit your expenses and declarations, it is not specific on which forms or formats are used. If the forms in the examples that follow do not seem to match those you have been issued with by your council, you have two choices:

1. Print off a set of the 2022 forms from the Electoral Commissions website and follow these instructions. You do not have to use the forms the council give you.
2. You could use forms issued by the council. However, you may have a problem matching the forms to the guidance. If you are confused by the forms being issued by your Council you can contact ALDC for advice.

Deadlines for Expense Returns

The deadline for submitting your Election Expense paperwork for the 2023 Local Elections changes slightly depending on the day in which the election result is declared, the whether you are standing in a Principal Authority election or a Town, Parish or Community Council election.

For all Principal Authority Elections in England, Scotland and Wales the deadline is always 35 days after the result is declared. So for example:

• If your result is declared on Thursday 4 May the deadline for returns is Thursday 8 June
• If your result is declared on Friday 5 May the deadline for returns is Friday 9 June
• If your result is declared between Saturday 6 and Monday 8 May the deadline for returns is Monday 12 June

Within 7 days of submitting the expense return the Returning Officer must receive the candidate’s declaration form. It is best practice to just return this at the same time as your expenses.

Deadlines for Town, Parish and Community Council Candidate Expense Returns

The deadline for submitting expense returns for 2023 Parish, Town and Wales Community Council elections is slightly earlier – Thursday 1 June – or 28 days after the date of the election.

Parish Council candidates are legally their own agent. It is still a legal necessity for Parish candidates to submit a set of expense returns. These returns must include any leaflet that promoted the Parish candidate – even if these were produced for principal authority elections occurring on the same day.

Deadlines for receipt and payment of Invoices

Any invoices related to your election expenditure must be received and paid by set dates. Again these exact dates will change depending on the date on which the election result is declared. For all Principal Authority elections in England, Scotland and Wales the deadlines are that invoices must be received within 21 days of the result being declared and paid within 28 days of the result being declared. So for example.

• If your result is declared on Thursday 4 May your invoices must be received by Thursday 25 May and paid by Thursday 1 June.
• If your result is declared on Friday 5 May your invoices must be received by Friday 26 May and paid by Friday 2 June.
• If your result is declared between Saturday 6 and Monday 8 of May your invoices must be received by Tuesday 30 May and paid by Monday 5 June.

For Parish, Town and Community Council elections the deadlines are slightly shorter. All invoices should be received within 14 calendar days of the election, and paid within 28 calendar days after the day of the election.

The Expense Limit

The expenses incurred promoting a candidate during the regulated period must fall within a strict legal limit.

The limit for the 2022 Local Elections in England, Scotland and Wales is £806 plus 7p for each local government elector on the register for the ward on the last day for publication of notice of the election. This limit is the same for Parish, Town and Community Council elections.

To find out the number of eligible registered electors for your ward on this date you need to contact the electoral services office at your council.

So for instance if there are 6000 registered electors in the ward at publication of notice of election the spending limit would be 806 + (6000 x 0.07) = £1226.

Once you have calculated your expense limit you should confirm this with your Council’s Election Officer / Returning Officer. If you feel there is an unusual discrepancy between the figure you arrive at and the figure your Returning Officer provides please call ALDC for advice line on 0161 302 7532.

Joint Candidates

The expense limits for joint candidates is slightly different and lower for each individual candidate.

You are considered a joint candidate if you are standing in the same ward for the same political party and; you have the same election agent, or use the same campaign/committee rooms or publish joint material.

Therefore if you are standing in a joint election with multiple candidates being elected in a ward on the same day you highly likely to be a joint candidate. Each candidate must still each submit a full set of expense returns.

The spending limit for each individual candidate in a joint election is reduced as follows:

• Two candidates – 25% reduction in spending limit for each candidate
• Three or more candidates – 33% reduction in spending limit for each candidate

So for instance if the expense limit for a ward is £1226 but you have two candidates standing and issuing joint material the limit would be £1226 x 0.75 = £919.50.

These adjustments are the same for all elections (Principal and Parish/Town) in England, Scotland and Wales.

If you are standing in more than one election on the same day (for instance for both a Parish Council and Principal Authority) then these are considered to be completely separate elections. Both elections need an agent (though this can be the same person) and a set of expenses will need to be submitted for both elections – the expense limits will not be affected. Any literature that is delivered promoting you as a candidate in an area that falls within both wards in which you are standing should therefore be recorded in full on both sets of expenses.

Explanatory Notes for filling in your forms

The following notes will help you understand and complete your expense returns.

You should always make a copy of your expense return for your own records.

Plan you’re spending and keep a record of your expenses, leaflets and receipts

Before you campaign you should cost out your literature plan – and additional election expenditure (staff, office, events etc) to make sure that your plan will come in under the election expense limit. Make sure you keep a record and a copy of all items of literature you produce that are delivered during the regulated period, and a copy of any receipts you receive from printers etc.

Notional Expenditure

Notional Expenditure (for instance gifts in kind) allows discounts or ‘special deals’ to adequately and fairly recorded. If you do have to declare any notional expenditure, it will have to appear both at its commercial value in the value column of the form and then as nil or the discounted amount in amount paid column.

You must cost at “market value” anything given for free or at more than 10% discount – that costs a total of £50 or more.

The agent is still the only person who can authorise and incur costs for a candidate’s campaign but not everything now needs to literally pass through the Campaign account. The old practise of handing over cheques and receiving balancing donations when services or materials are donated is now unnecessary.

The most frequent use of this notional expenditure mechanism is the “omnibus” invoice from the local party.

The Omnibus Invoice

The omnibus invoice is an invoice from your local party (for instance) to the campaign for “services rendered”.

This can be used to wrap up a series of small bills into one: eg Items sold to campaign from stock (e.g. envelopes, stamps, tellers pads), including those bought in advance, items hired out to campaign (e.g. use of computer database, rosettes, website, stakes for posters).

This is often a notional item. Items such as computer equipment, which has been bought for general use, and which some use is made of during the election can be covered in this sort of invoice as an overhead or by a specific bill for hire of the equipment.

However there is nothing to stop the local party paying for the printing of all the campaign literature (perhaps using economies of scale to get a cheaper deal) and this being included in the “omnibus” invoice. This is common practise for local elections in target parliamentary seats.

Free Items

Anything given for free or at more than 10% discount must still be included in your returns if the value is more than
£50.

You should give the market value for these items. For instance if you get £100 of printing for free, you must still include a notional expenditure of £100 in the return; if you paid only £10 for it then you include the £10 actual expenditure and £90 of notional expenditure.

If the value is less than £50, the gift in kind does not count towards your expense limit. Most committee rooms, for example, will cost less than £50 to the campaign, so you don’t need to worry about including a nominal sum for their
use any more.

Office Items

Office Equipment like computers etc should be hired from the local party.

However, you do not have to include the costs of using computing or printing equipment which was acquired by the
candidate or by another individual principally for their own personal use if the provision was made free of charge,
e.g. laser printer connected to computer at home which is used for printing a few canvass cards.

Remember also that items supplied free that are worth less than £50 do not have to be included in the expense return
anyway, so this covers use of some paper, toner and electricity along with the equipment.

Web and Emails

Costs associated with email and website should be invoiced by the local party or the Local Internet Officer, depending on who normally pays the bills. In calculating the hire charge bear in mind that many of these can be used over several elections and also used outside of election time – which means the hire charge for any one election may be quite low.

Hired Items

If you use items such as loudspeakers, sledgehammers, poster boards, etc which are owned by the local party, then the local party should bill the agent for a reasonable hiring charge.

Nil Returns

Even if you didn’t spend any money on your campaign – you still need to file a return.

You should be careful that there were no shared expenses part of which should be declared (for example the costs of copying the district wide manifesto and renting a room for a campaign launch would need sharing between all candidates).

Volunteers and Helpers

Volunteers can in most cases give their time for free – you don’t need to allow for it in your expenses.

People can give their time for free and can also provide transport services for free if they are using a means of transport acquired principally for their own personal use (e.g. their own car).

Candidates can also use their own means of transport for free if they too were principally acquired for their own personal use (e.g. their own car).

However, if for instance a minibus was hired to transport volunteers into a target ward, this would need to be recorded as a campaign expense.

Also any payments made to individuals eg to an artworker or paid deliverers, must be included. Please note that payment to canvassers is illegal during the formal campaign period.

If you are fighting more than one election on the same day in a single area remember the other Election Limits. If
your were wise enough to include content in your literature or other expenditure that can legitimately be shared as a cost – for instance with Parish Council elections that are running at the same time.

Remember to apportion the costs between the campaigns and ensure that the different apportionments together add up to 100% of the total cost for that item. Make sure you agree the apportionments with the other agents and don’t expect her/him pay the other shares unless that was pre-arranged.

Donations

Donations made to candidates to help them meet the cost of campaign activity, and exceed £50 in value, need to be recorded in the Permissible Donations section of the Expense Return forms.

Donations refer to any money, goods, property or services given towards candidate spending without charge or on non-commercial terms that amount to over £50.

For instance this could include a gift of money, payment of an invoice as a gift or use of office space / equipment free of charge.

In most cases such donations would be made to a the Local Party and would go into it’s general fighting fund pot for all candidates within the Local Party area. Donations made in such a way do not need to be recorded on individual candidate election expense returns. However a donation from the Local Party to an individual candidate to meet their campaign costs does need to be recorded.

Donations can only be accepted from a permissible source based in the UK. These include;

• Individuals registered on a UK electoral register, including overseas electors
• Great Britain registered political parties
• UK-registered companies incorporated in the UK that carry on business in the UK
• UK-registered trade unions
• UK-registered building societies
• UK-registered limited liability partnerships (LLPs) that carry on business in the UK
• UK-registered friendly societies
• UK-based unincorporated associations that carry on business or other activities wholly or mainly in the UK and have their main office in the UK

If you receive a donation to your campaign you need to check that it comes from a permissible source. If it does not it needs to be returned within 30 days of receiving it.

If it is permissible and you accept it you need record the name and address of the donor, the value of the donation, and the date you both received the donation and the date you accepted it.

After the election you need to record all such donations you received in your expenses return.

The Law

Failure to comply with the statutory provisions below regarding election expenses are illegal practices punishable by a fine of up to £5,000.

Any person convicted of an illegal practice is disqualified from standing for election for the period for which they were elected to serve or for which if elected they might have served. If at the date of the report they hold any elective office it is vacated on that date. This is so whether there is personal guilt or guilt by agent.

They are also disqualified from registration and voting for three years.

1. Failure by a candidate or election agent to make a return or declaration of election expenses which the Statute requires. Submission of an incomplete or inaccurate return is also an illegal practice.
2. Knowingly paying any sum or incurring any expense by a candidate or election agent, before, during or after an election in excess of the maximum permitted sum.
3. With exceptions for personal and petty expenses, making any payment or advance in respect of election expenses, otherwise than by or through the candidate’s election agent.
4. Providing money for election expenses, as a gift, loan, advance or deposit by a payment otherwise than to the candidate or his agent.
5. Paying election expenses other than within the permitted time for such payments.

Running Through Your Expense Forms

Below is a run through of the Election Expense forms with some notes to help you fill them out. The below forms are for Principal Authority elections in England and Wales. The forms for Scottish elections are identical and the same rules apply – however they are uniquely branded and you should use the Scottish forms for Scottish elections.

Parish, Town and Welsh Community Council elections have their own forms that look significantly different from the forms below. The spending limits and rules are the same but they are recorded differently on the forms.

You can download Parish and Community Council returns and guidance for completing them at the top of this toolkit.