Electoral Roll and a change of address: what to know

If you’ve moved recently and need to change your address on the Electoral Roll (or “Electoral Register”), the good news is the process is quite straightforward. You can get in touch with your local authority or update your registration online. 

In addition to letting you vote, your Electoral Roll (ER) status is of interest to prospective lenders because it lets them verify your identity during credit checks. So it’s important to make sure that your ER listing is up to date and showing your current address, and that the credit reference agencies (CRAs) are correctly reporting your ER information.

In this guide, we explain how to check your current Electoral Roll status and apply to update your current listing. We also discuss when your listing will be updated, what your ER information is used for, and why it’s important to keep it up to date.

How can I check my current Electoral Roll status?

There are two ways to check your current Electoral Roll registration:

1. By contacting your local Electoral Registration Office. If you’re living in England, Scotland, or Wales, you can contact the office here. After entering your postcode, the portal will give you the contact details (typically a phone number or email address) for your local Electoral Registration scheme.  If you’re living in Northern Ireland, you can contact the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland (EONI) instead.

2. By checking your credit report. Monitoring your credit report over time helps you stay updated with changes to your Electoral Roll status and verify that the credit reference agencies are holding your information correctly.  

Checkmyfile lets you check the information held about you by the UK’s three main credit reference agencies— Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion—in one place. This means you can conveniently compare your Electoral Roll entries across the three CRAs to make sure the information is correct and up to date. Since the CRAs are independent from each other, it’s important to check that each is correctly reporting your Electoral Roll status. This is because lenders may run credit checks with any of the CRAs, so having incorrect information on any one of them can potentially hurt your credit applications.

How to register on the Electoral Roll at your new address

Your Electoral Roll information needs updating if you’ve changed your name, nationality, or address. There are two ways to update your registration details, including:

1. Online. The quickest and most straightforward way to update your address (or name) on the Electoral Roll is to do so via the UK government website. The portal requests your National Insurance number (but you can still register if you don’t have one), and the form asks for your personal details, including your name, address, date of birth, and nationality.

2. Via your local authority. You can contact your local council’s Electoral Registration Office directly to update your Electoral Roll listing, including your address. The office’s contact details should be listed on your local council’s website.

After completing the registration, your name and address will appear on the Electoral Roll.

Can I register on the Electoral Roll at two addresses?

In some cases, you might be allowed to register on the Electoral Roll at two addresses; for example, if you split your time between two homes, own more than one property, or are a student living on campus with different home and term-time addresses. In these cases, you may be able to register at two addresses, provided they’re both in different council areas. 

Registering at two addresses does not mean you get two votes in UK Parliament elections though. You can only vote at one address, although you can choose which one. Voting more than once in the same parliamentary election is illegal. 

However, you'll be allowed to vote at both addresses in local council elections, provided you’re voting in different council areas. In this instance, you’ll need to register to vote twice, once at each address.

For anonymous registration

If you’ve previously registered to vote anonymously, you’ll need to reapply each year because anonymous registration only lasts for a year. Additionally, if your name, nationality, or address changes during the year, it’s important to update your anonymous registration accordingly. 

Anonymous registration is for voters concerned about their name and address appearing on the Electoral Register for safety reasons. Doing so means your name and address won’t appear on the ER and your Electoral Registration Office won’t disclose your details to anyone unless they’re legally required to. This also means that it won’t show on your credit report and therefore, may impact your credit applications and credit score.

To apply to register anonymously, you’ll be required to:

• Explain your safety concerns, i.e., why your name and address appearing on the ER can put your safety—or the safety of someone living in the same household as you—at risk.

• Provide evidence to support your application. This evidence can be court documents or attestations from authorised persons. The voter registration forms for registering anonymously detail which documents can be used, the form for attestation, and who is qualified to attest your application. An attestation in this case is simply a formal document signed by a qualifying officer (such as a police officer above a certain rank or a registered nurse), certifying that your safety would be at risk if your name and address appear on the Electoral Register. 

The forms with the instructions are available on the UK government website and you can also contact your local Electoral Registration Office about posting a form to you. 

When will my Electoral Roll status be updated?

Although CRAs get regular Electoral Roll updates from local councils, it’s not uncommon for a new listing to take up to three months from the date it was published to show on your credit report. 

When your credit report will reflect your information depends on the date you registered your details. This is because the year is broken down into two periods, known as:

• The rolling registration period. This falls between January and July, and any changes made to your ER details during this time are usually published in the following month. However, if you register mid-month or after that, your electoral details are more likely to be published in the month after next instead.

• The Annual Canvass.  This big update occurs annually; it starts in July and concludes around December (although some councils may finish collecting data earlier). Local councils collect data by posting a Household Enquiry Form to all properties during the Annual Canvass and process, audit, and update their voting records with the details of people who respond. This process can take a while, so the councils don’t typically publish the updated register until December. The CRAs then update their own systems, which can take a month or more (depending on your local council) because of the volume of collated data. This means your credit report may not reflect your updated information until January of next year. Importantly, when the Annual Canvass is in process, the CRAs don’t accept any requests to manually update this information.

Raising a dispute with the CRAs

Outside of the Annual Canvass, if more than one month has passed from when your new Electoral Roll status was published and your credit report isn’t reflecting the change, it’s possible to raise a dispute with a CRA, in which case they may manually update your information. 

To raise this dispute, you’ll need an official letter of confirmation of the change in your ER status from your local council. For most councils in the UK, the provision of the letter is standard and should be free of charge. The letter needs to detail the date your listing was published and the exact name and address format to which it’s registered. 

After getting the letter, you can raise a dispute with each CRA individually to request that your ER status be amended. Alternatively, if you’re an active Checkmyfile subscriber, we can raise the dispute on your behalf, provided more than one month has passed from the date of publication, and you share a scanned copy of the letter with us.

Note: Credit reports don’t hold Electoral Roll information that’s scheduled to go live—they only reflect information that’s been published and shared with the CRAs. So if your new information or listing is yet to go live, it won’t be reflected on your credit report at present.

What is the Electoral Roll used for?

The Electoral Register serves several purposes, including:

• Verifying voting eligibility. The Electoral Register determines who is eligible to vote in national and local elections, and referendums. If you meet the eligibility requirements to vote, it’s important to make sure you’re correctly registered on the Electoral Roll (i.e. with your name and current address).

• Jury selection. Names are selected randomly from the Electoral Register for jury service.

• Credit checks and verifying identity. Registering on the Electoral Roll and making sure your information is up to date is very important for your credit health. Credit card companies, lenders (especially mortgage lenders), employers and various other entities use your Electoral Roll status to verify you at your current address. They match the name and address on your application against your Electoral Roll information. 

Each CRA independently collects and holds information about you, and lenders may run a credit check with any one of the three main CRAs.  

The importance of keeping your ER information up to date

Making sure your information on the Electoral Register is correct and up to date is important for voting purposes. However, as lenders access your Electoral Roll information as held by the CRAs to verify your personal details, it's important to make sure that each CRA is correctly reporting your information as well.

If your ER information is incorrect or not up to date, lenders may ask for further proof of your identity (delaying the application), or even reject your application outright. So, making sure that all three main CRAs hold the correct information about you—including after you make any updates—is critical. 

Address formats and their effect on credit reports

For addresses, it’s not only important to ensure they’re correct in terms of the location; their format matters too. 

Your current address isn’t the only one that’ll be listed on your credit report, previous addresses that you’ve been connected to financially also appear. Prospective lenders usually collect one current and one or more previous addresses from you during the application, which are then used by the CRAs to return the credit report information linked to the given addresses.

However, the process can be stalled if the addresses on your credit application appear in a format different to the ones held on your Electoral Roll listing, and credit accounts. If your information is held under different formats, it’s possible that either an incomplete credit file or no information at all will be returned by the credit reference agency. Consequently, your application may be declined, or additional verification steps may be required. 

Format changes can be as small as replacing “flat” with “apartment,” or having your flat name listed as ‘Flat 2, 15’ on the Electoral Roll and ‘15/2’ elsewhere. Although both address formats may be valid it's important to make sure your addresses appear in a consistent format everywhere—on the Electoral Register and all your accounts—if you want to be sure your credit report will reflect all of your data. 

You can easily compare your information as held by the UK’s three main CRAs (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion), including addresses and their formats, in one place using Checkmyfile. 

Summary: How to change your address on the Electoral Roll

If your name or address has changed, it’s time to update your Electoral Roll listing. Doing so is straightforward; just fill in the form on the UK government website or contact your local Electoral Roll office. 

The time it takes for these changes to appear on the Electoral Register depends on when you submit your application; if it’s during the Annual Canvass period for example, it can take up to three months. After your Electoral Roll listing is updated, it’s important to make sure that the credit reference agencies are all correctly reporting your information. 

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