The Devil's In The Detail – The Fine Art Of Candidate Qualification

"The jury is still out" as they say, after the court of appeal first upheld and then overturned an application by Respect against the disqualification of three candidates in the St Katharine's and Wapping ward of Tower Hamlets for supposedly completing their nomination forms incorrectly.

In light of the importance of getting the details right in order to avoid any possible accusations of impropriety, I thought I would take a look at the nominations data for the recent Hackney elections, comparing the candidate data posted on Hackney Council’s Town Hall Square information boards with the electoral register data.

At risk of being accused of smearing individuals, let me say from the outset that I can only report as I find. It could be that there were errors in the electoral register or in the Town Hall Square publications or maybe someone moved home at the last minute or explained any discrepancies to the satisfaction of the election authorities. One thing is clear – all of these candidate nominations were accepted by the Returning Officer, so I presume it follows that in the view of Hackney Council none of the candidates committed any electoral offence.

Firstly, a few rules for the uninitiated. Candidates must be 21 and citizens of the EU or Commonwealth. For the local authority area where they stand, they must either be a registered elector or otherwise have been a property owner, tenant, resident or employee in the area for at least 12 months. They must give their full names (without titles or initials) and full home addresses without abbreviations (not business address). Addresses do not need to be in the borough, so long as one of the other conditions applies. Party descriptions may not exceed 6 words and must be approved by the party. For the precise wording of the rules, click here: Guidance for Candidates and Agents .


I am pleased to report that all candidates managed to avoid titles and initials and only the Christians came close to the party name limits, with their 6-word title. The good news (no pun intended) is that 194 of the 222 local candidates managed to enter their details on their nominations exactly as they appear on the Hackney electoral register.

And the other 28? Well, 5 of them lodged out-of-borough addresses and that’s perfectly fine, presuming that they met at least one of the other criteria. The five are: 1 Conservative, 1 Green, 1 Christian, 1 Respect and 1 Socialist Unity. A further 7 candidates gave in-borough addresses but do not appear to be registered to vote. Again just fine, so long as they live or work here, although you must wonder why someone so interested in becoming a Councillor would not bother to register for a vote. It may, of course, be the case that some of them are registered to vote elsewhere, but met the conditions to stand for office in Hackney. The 7 are: 4 Greens, 3 Conservatives, 1 Christian, 1 Hackney Independent [edited correction], 1 LibDem, 1 Respect and 1 Socialist Unity.

The next group are the 12 candidates who gave nomination addresses different from those shown on the electoral register. These are: 5 Conservative, 4 Labour, 2 LibDems and 1 Green. Nothing illegal here, but it does make you wonder why candidates would be so confused about where they live.

Finally we have the 4 candidates who were not certain about their own names. I’m pleased to reveal, in the interests of balance, that these were 1 Labour, 1 Conservative and 2 Greens. The case of the Labour candidate is confusing because she gives a nomination address at which someone with the same initial name but different family name is registered. So maybe name confusion or maybe a different address. The Greens have spelling trouble – one shows two different family name spellings (as does the Tory) and one shows two different initial name spellings.

Luckily for all of us, only two of these 28 candidates were actually elected, so we won’t have to suffer at the hands of confused Councillors any more than we do already.