“The new home address form (1b) is causing rather a lot of confusion. This has been introduced due to legislation being recently passed to remove the requirement for home addresses from ballot papers and notices. Both the candidate’s home address and the address relating to the qualifications on form 1c need to be included on the home address form. The Electoral Commission have advised that leaving this blank or writing ‘as above’ is not sufficient in the qualifying address box and a candidate must repeat their home address where this relates to qualifications a, b and d and/or the address of their place of work in the case of qualification c. This all sounds rather detailed but the nomination papers that we have seen for informal checks so far have all had inaccuracies on this particular form and would not be deemed to be valid. Whilst there is no requirement for clerks to do any checking of any nomination papers for their council, if you are doing so, please be aware of this. It has to be said that this form is something that is new to the Elections Team and has taken some effort to understand.”