Individual Electoral Registration
The electoral registration system changed in June 2014 to Individual Electoral Registration (IER). Instead of the previous system where one member of a household registered everyone at an address, under IER every person who wishes to register to vote now has to register themselves individually.
You can either register to vote online or by using a paper form. Every person who applies to register to vote needs to provide their National Insurance Number and date of birth. These details are checked against the Department of Work and Pensions' (DWP) records so we can confirm who you are before you are added to the register.
In 2014, everybody who was registered to vote had their details checked against DWP's records. Most people's details matched, automatically transferring them onto the new system, and were sent a letter to say so. If your details didn't match, you should have received an application form to re-register. YOU MUST BE ON THE ELECTORAL REGISTER in order to vote in parliamentary general election and local elections.
If you don't know if you are individually registered, or you have moved in the last year, you can register to vote online. It takes less than 5 minutes.