Frequently Asked Questions  

Looking for a lost friend or relative?

Finding a lost friend or relative on the electoral register could be difficult because electoral registration is performed by the local electoral registration office for each area and there is no official centralised electoral register that can be searched.

If you want to look at the register to try to find a lost friend or relative, there are two versions of the electoral register that you can look at – the full version and the edited version.  The full register is used only for elections, preventing and detecting crime and checking applications for credit.  The edited register is available for general sale and can be used for commercial activities such as marketing.  It is possible to search the edited register using online commercial organisations, but it is not possible to search the full register in this way, as the full registers are only available to view in hard copy at each local electoral registration office.