RESPOND TO YOUR HEF and you won’t have to Huff if you find you are not on the Electoral Register next time you go to vote in Tower Hamlets. The Council has sent a Household Enquiry Form (HEF) to every household asking residents to confirm their place on the Electoral Register.
The letter is the first part of the annual electoral registration canvass that usually takes place in the autumn and which will culminate, on 1st December, with the publication of a draft register.
Some people don’t prioritise registering in a year when an election is not due – but any ward can have a by-election at any time and you never know when there might be a snap General Election. If you want to keep your right to vote, make sure you get your name on the Electoral Register early.
Some agencies check the electoral register when they are checking identities. If that doesn’t persuade you, it is also a legal requirement to make sure you are on the electoral register if you are entitled to vote in the UK.
The Council does chase voters to reply to its request for information about potential voters. The costs in doing so are paid out of central government grant and the Council Tax which residents pay – so filling out your HEF and returning it (rather than waiting to be reminded again and again) saves us all money.
The Tower Hamlets Electoral Registration Officer is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Will Tuckley, who used to be one of the highest paid CEOs in the country when he worked for Bexley. He is reported to have been paid £228,659 in 2016/17 as CEO of Tower Hamlets (that’s £4,397.29 a week – a rate which pays him the average annual household income in Tower Hamlets every seven weeks).
One of the reasons why Mr Tuckley was employed was to improve the running of the local election process in the borough. In the May elections, Tower Hamlets was the last borough in the country to declare its results.
Mr Tuckley encouraged voters to help the electoral process out by responding to their WEF as quickly as possible. He said, “Anyone who wants to vote must be registered. To have your say during elections simply check the form when it arrives and respond as promptly as possible. Doing this online, by text or phone at any time day or night is the quickest and easiest way and you don’t need to return the form if you use one of these methods.”
•If you need more information about registering, call 020-7364 0872 or go to: www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/vote
•Read more about it: Chief Exec: £200,000; 237 community organisations: £0 Voter fraud? Must be an election due…