Use the Electoral Roll to trace debtors and gone away accounts
Electoral Registry and searching the electoral roll
The Electoral roll online is a relatively new way to trace people. The 2010 electoral roll will be available from Novemeber 2009 but what exactly is the Electoral roll?
Registration to vote is the bedrock of the democratic process, and it’s important that electoral registers are as complete and accurate as possible – so everyone who is entitled to vote can, and no one is on the register who shouldn’t be.
The electoral roll (also known as Voters roll searches and Electoral register searches) is a list of people who are eligible to vote, it also contains their address. To be able to vote you need to be one of the following:
- a UK citizens
- a qualifying Commonwealth citizens
- a citizens of any EU country resident in the UK
- certain UK citizens that live or work abroad
The electoral roll is updated annually and is held at your local electoral registration office (usually the local council office in England and Wales). The Northern Ireland electoral register is held by the central Electoral Office for Northern Ireland.
Searching the electoral roll online is a great way to trace people, it can give you their current address and tell you how long they have lived at an address. Companies can provide ways to search the voters roll but you cannot search the electoral roll for free.
There are two version of the electoral registry, a full version and an edited version. Viewing the full electoral registry for free can be done by anyone. The full register is used for voting and its supply and use is restricted by law. However, every person has a legal right to access the electoral registry for free as long as they are supervised. Copies of the register are available to certain groups and individuals, such as credit reference agencies and political parties.
The full register contains the following information:
- voter number (two letters indicating the polling district, followed by a number)
- voter's name and address
- date of birth (if 18th birthday falls within a year of the register is published)
- if the voter has requested a postal vote after an election,
- an indication of whether or not that voter cast their vote
Many people perform free electoral roll searches to help them find lost friends and family or who are compiling their family tree.
Since 2003 people who register to vote do not necessarily appear on the electoral registry. Some people will may have exercised their right to be omitted or 'opt-out' of the registry and this is the second version. This edited version is not free to view but can be purchased by anyone for any purpose.
UK Electoral roll online searches
The electoral roll online searches allows you to search the electoral roll to find missing people. It is a quick and cost effective way of locating people. You can search:
- Last known address – to see when they left
- their name across the whole country or a specific area of the country
- Double name search – search a couple at one address, very useful if you have the name of your subjects partner.
Some allow you to search a name and a date of birth; this is a very accurate way of searching.
Search the UK electoral roll for free?
Unfortunately you can’t do this anymore. There are no companies that will allow you to do this. Local authorities collect the data and sell it to private companies; these companies charge a fee to make this money back as it can run into thousands of pounds. To search the electoral roll for free will not be possible. As you have to pay to search the electoral roll online it is a good idea to find a company that can give you the best return for your money like ourselves, we have staff to carry out electoral roll searches and use the database to achieve a higher standard of results, we have
Access to the latest version of the Electoral roll Access to historical versions of the Electoral roll. You should also look into what you get for your money; do you only get access to the electoral roll? If this is the case have you considered that 42% of people opt out of the electoral roll? This means that your search may be a complete waste of money we search other systems at the same time as the electoral roll at no extra cost to give you the most accurate results. Other systems that we have access to include
- Royal Mail PAF File – a database of millions of names and addresses
- British Telecom’s Direct Enquiry searches – The Electoral roll does not include phone numbers.
- Access to historical electoral roll, before 2002 the electoral roll online was inclusive of over 90% of adults in the UK.
The Electoral Roll also has other names
- Electoral roll online
- Voters roll online
- Electoral register online
- Voters register online