If you can't, or don't want to, vote in person at a polling station, you can apply to vote by post.

You can arrange a postal vote for:

• a single election - for example, if you'll be on holiday on the day of the election
• a set amount of time - for example, if you're a student or regularly work away from home
• permanently - we'll send a ballot paper to you by post whenever there's an election until you tell us otherwise

Register to vote by post

To register to vote by post, fill in the postal voting application form, and then send it back to us.

If you can't print the form out yourself, contact Electoral Services and we'll send you one.

Once we've received your completed application, we'll write to you to confirm your voting arrangements. If you don't get written confirmation after 1 month, contact Electoral Services to check that we received your application.

Key points about postal voting

There are some important things to remember about postal voting:

• once we've sent you your postal vote, you can't choose to vote in person at a polling station
• we can send postal votes to any address, even abroad, but we have no control over delays to your vote being delivered
• if we don't receive your completed postal vote by election day, your vote won't be counted
• you're responsible for paying return postage if you have your postal vote sent abroad
• we send out postal votes about a week before election day, so make sure you'll be at the address where your postal vote will be sent
• if you're a permanent postal voter, make sure you let us know if you move house, or your postal vote will be sent to your old address
• if you're a permanent postal voter, you'll need to refresh your signature every 5 years

You can find out more in the postal voting FAQs.