Register to vote
Individual electoral registration
Registering to vote keeps your credit reference up to date as well as ensuring you will be able to vote. If you are already registered to vote, you do not need to do so again.
When you move to a new property you need to register to vote at your new property. Anyone else moving with you aged 16 and over also needs to register.
You need to provide your date of birth and National Insurance number for verification purposes. The easiest place to find your National Insurance number is on official paperwork such as your National Insurance card, payslips or letters from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). If you can't find it, you can use the HMRC enquiry service - GOV.UK.
For further information on voter registration please read: Individual Electoral Registration FAQs (PDF)
Changes to electoral registration
British Overseas Electors
Any British citizen (which includes eligible Irish citizens and citizens of the Crown Dependencies) previously registered to vote in the UK, or who previously lived in the UK, may now register to vote as an overseas elector, regardless of how long they have lived abroad.
British citizens living abroad are able to register to vote using the address where they were last registered to vote in the UK. If they were never registered to vote in the UK, they can register using the last UK address they lived at.
To register to vote as an overseas elector and for more information, please use the following link.
EU Citizens’ Voting and Candidacy rights
Following the UK’s departure from the European Union (EU), EU citizens will no longer be automatically entitled to register, vote and stand for election. All EU citizens will continue to be able to vote while they remain on the register (including at the local elections on 2nd May 2024), but will not be able to re-register once they are taken off of the register after May 2024. However, two groups of EU citizens will retain their rights:
Group 1: ‘Qualified EU citizens’ – Where a reciprocal agreement with an EU country is in place. Currently, this is limited to Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
Group 2: ‘EU citizens with retained rights’ – EU citizens who were resident in the UK before 1 January 2021.
During 2024, we will contact EU residents on the current register to explain the review of the register and on any action, they may need to take.
Credit reference agencies
In England, Scotland and Wales, local councils publish their electoral registers on 1 December each year. These show who is registered to vote from each address - UK, EU or Commonwealth citizens that are either over 18 or will become 18 during the coming year. After 1 December credit reference agencies update their records from the new registers, how quickly that happens is down to each credit reference agency.
From January to August councils send monthly updates to the credit reference agencies on the first working day of the month. Register updates are not provided to credit reference agencies in October and November, as this is when all local councils conduct the annual canvass of their registers.
Once the registration process has been completed with the local council, the listing doesn’t immediately appear on your Credit Report. It typically takes between one and three months for a listing to automatically be reflected in data held by the UK's Credit Reference Agencies. In some circumstances, this process can be helped along if you can present a written confirmation letter from your council stating that you are registered to vote at your current address.
Data protection
- We will only use the information you give us for electoral purposes.
- We will look after personal information securely and we will follow the Data Protection Act 2018.
- We will not give personal information about you and the other people in your household to anyone else or another organisation unless we have to by law.
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council has now published its privacy notice.
Postal and Proxy voting
If you are not able to vote in person you can apply for a postal or proxy vote.
Apply for a postal or proxy vote
The Open and Electoral Registers
Read about the Open and Electoral Registers.