Public Sector CCM
Local authorities across the United Kingdom are responsible for the management of local and national democratic elections within the constraints of their regional boundaries. In the UK democratic system, general elections, local elections, mayoral elections, police and crime commissioner elections and referendums are managed locally despite many having a national focus.
After a competitive tender process, we were successful in securing a 5 year contract with one of the larger local authorities – Newcastle City Council. Newcastle City Council is the local government authority for Newcastle upon Tyne, a city in Tyne and Wear, with an electorate of approximately 195,635.
The Challenge
Despite the parameters set out by the Electoral Commission, local authorities still have options and flexibility at multiple stages of the electoral printing process such as the design of certain products i.e. postal voting packs. Inevitably, this delivers multiple designs of the same electoral product and multiple methods of delivery across the UK.
The Solution
Our solution for democratic services is designed to be as efficient as possible, optimising and rationalising product options to reduce costs and consolidating production across multiple local authorities to realise the benefits of scale in print production. We have created a single, cost and time efficient production process for a series of uniform products provided to our local authority clients. Furthermore, we operate our own C9 licence, meaning we can manage postage providing significant savings over Royal Mail rates.
Combining production and mailing routes across over 30 local authority clients delivers cost savings for organisations under intense pressure to optimise its expenditure of public funds. Due to the efficiency of our solution and the experience and capabilities that underpin it, Newcastle City Council assessed our offer against other tenders and concluded that ours was the best option for the proposed 5 year contract.
We now support Newcastle City Council with a range of printed electoral products including, Poll Cards, Postal Poll Cards, Proxy Poll, Cards, Proxy Postal Poll Cards, Postal Votes, Spare Postal Votes, Ordinary and Tendered Ballot Books, CNL1s, CNL2s and Large Print Ballot Papers.
The Benefits
During the November 2019 General Election, Newcastle City Council used Adare Post rather than Royal Mail saving almost £14,000 vs standard Royal Mail rates. In the context of limited funds within local authorities, this is a significant saving.
