Swale - Colour Coded Postcards (3) AMENDED

Encouraging response – Colour-coded Household Notification Cards ERO/Local Swale [email protected] authority: 01795 417558 Authority profile: Type: Borough Population: 141,000 (ONS mid-2014 population estimates, rounded to the nearest thousand) Household numbers: 59,000 (ONS 2015 household projections) Electoral register size: 97,696 (ONS as at 1 December 2015)

Issue to address and Swale had over 5,000 Invitations to Register (ITRs) that had been sent out during the canvass as a result of expected impact Household Enquiry Form responses but had not received the expected numbers of applications despite reminders and, in some cases, a personal visit.

Electors appeared to have been confused about getting a 2nd form and had not understood that the HEF did not register them to vote. Sending out similar looking A3 ITR forms was not working.

Swale needed to encourage a response. The Household Notification Letter used before the 2015 UK Parliamentary general election had proved very successful so they came up with the Household Notification Card (HNC) for this year’s canvass using a colour coded traffic light system. This was a postcard-style communication, a different look to the forms, designed to encourage people who were not already registered to make an application.

Summary of approach 3777 HNCs (with text printed in colour on A5 card) were posted to properties that had at least one elector who had not responded to an ITR (NB: there were a total of 5200 people who had not responded to an ITR for at least 1 month or more). IER-registered electors at the property were printed in GREEN and the electors who hadn’t responded to the ITRs were printed in RED1.

The most complicated aspect of this mailing was the data work. The EMS supplier did not have a data export for what Swale were trying to achieve so they had to re-run their HEF data and then de-duplicate all of their non-responding ITR data to identify the properties to be sent an HNC. They then had to flag the different

1 From the example provided below, the use of colour is an effective way of getting the message across quickly due to the association of green with “Go” and red with “Stop”, with some explanatory text about the meaning of each list of names. Those considering similar mailings should consult with their equalities teams on the use of colours.

1 states of the electors in the data to the printers (i.e. print IER-registered electors in green and potential electors in red). An example of what the postcard looked like is provided below:

Swale - HNC.docx

Measurable impact The HNCs were delivered in early November 2015 and Swale saw an initial surge of applications in the first week of about 600 applications. Prior to the HNC their registration applications were coming through slowly, so Swale drew the reasonable conclusion that the vast majority of the 600 applications were as a direct result of the HNC. They also received a lot of information back through their customer services team where people had moved on so they could end the ITR chasing for those individuals.

Associated costs and Cost of printing and delivery savings delivered The cost of printing and delivery of the 3777 HNCs was £1400.

Savings through prompted registrations

As a result of applications which were prompted by the mailing, 600 fewer reminders and personal visits had to be made, saving an estimated £2000-£2200*.

Overall savings

On the basis of the costs and savings presented above, £600 - £800 was saved overall but with the potential for £3.50 of additional savings for each further application prompted by the HNC and beyond this initial surge.

* The savings are estimates as the HNC combined data from ITRs at all stages (i.e. ITR initial despatch, 1st reminder, 2nd Reminder/house visit stages), so people who were at an ITR initial despatch stage and responded to the HNC have potentially avoided the need for 2 reminders plus a house visit. An elector who was already at a 2nd stage reminder is just saving the cost of a house visit. Savings based on an average of £3.50 per elector, who responded, which covers print/stationery, postage, house visit and office/admin costs.

2 Principles met Accessibility – Does the practice improve accessibility to the electoral process?  Public confidence – Does the practice improve public confidence in the electoral process? 

Efficiency – Does the practice make an existing process less resource intensive while maintaining or  increasing the quality of service?

Consistency – Does the practice promote consistency of outcome and opportunity across an area?

Innovation – Does the practice use new or improved methods to achieve an improvement in quality of  service?

 Replicability/Scalability – Does the practice have potential to be replicated by others and could it be scaled across the wider electoral community?