Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Morning, and can I welcome Members and the public to this morning's meeting of the Llywydd's Committee in which we'll be taking evidence from the Electoral Commission in relation to their budget for 2025-26? Can I remind Members the meeting is bilingual? People who require simultaneous translation from Welsh to English, that's available in the room via the headsets on channel 1. If you require amplification, that's available on the headsets via channel 2. No, it's channel 0 now; it's changed. We are aware that we have remote participation, with one of our Members online. Can I give apologies from Janet Finch-Saunders who's unable to join us today? Again, can I remind everyone to make sure your mobile phones are on silent and any other electronic equipment which may interfere with broadcasting is off? There is no scheduled fire alarm today so, if one does occur, please follow the directions of the ushers to a safe location. Before we start, does any Member wish to declare an interest? No. 

Then we move on to our next item of business, which is the scrutiny of the financial estimates for 2025-26 of the Electoral Commission, and can I welcome our witnesses? And, for the record, would you like to introduce yourselves? Elan, we'll start with you.  

Diolch yn fawr. I have the honour of being the electoral commissioner for Wales, Elan Closs Stephens. 

Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive of the Electoral Commission. 

Rhydian.

Good morning. Bore da. I'm Rhydian Thomas. I'm head of the Electoral Commission in Wales.

Good morning. I'm Niki Nixon. I'm the interim director of communications for the commission.

Thank you very much. Can I thank you for attending, and can I thank you for the submission of the estimate that we've received, which, obviously, has led to us having some questions we wish to raise with yourselves. But before we go into our questioning, do you wish to make some opening remarks?

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you very much. Obviously, we are all in this together, in that we all want to serve our electoral processes and we all want to maintain the best possible trust in that system. So, we have a joint partnership, if I can put it like that, as a committee and as a commission, to achieve that end. But there are challenges in our mutual understanding, and I would like to address those challenges in a few minutes.

Before I came there—. This is obviously, in your eyes, an exceptional year, because our budget, our ask, is substantially higher, but obviously as well you don't need me to remind you that this is going to be an election year, in 2025-26, and that you as a Senedd have also maximised the number of elected representatives, you have changed the boundaries, and, more than anything, you have changed—. What I would say is you have made an almost generational change in the voting system that is going to be used in Wales. So, it comes as no surprise that this is a year in which our budget will spike.

When this committee will have bedded in for about 15, 20 years and it has a corporate memory, I think it will reflect what the National Audit Office accounts reflect, actually, which is that in, shall we say, the years when we're all coping with core issues, our ask remains steady, but that there will be a spike during a local government election, and there will be a spike during a Senedd election. And so, when you see that pattern over time, I don't think that this sort of ask will come as a surprise to the committee—it will come as the normal pattern of events.

But there are challenges, I think, to our mutual understanding, and I would like to put some of them before you, and I would also like to think, or like to suggest, that we might be able to get together out of committee to discuss with officials how best to surmount some of the problems that we have. One, the first one, is the lack of synchronisation between the budget setting of the commission to the UK Government in Westminster, which happens at the end of March 2025, and the need for us to bring a budget to you on 30 September, which is actually even before the autumn budget of the UK Chancellor. And as you will have noticed, there were things like increased national insurance et cetera this time round, which we couldn't have anticipated.

Secondly, you have an aversion, and I completely understand the aversion, to any form of supplementaries. And so what we are trying to put forward is an envelope that might account for some changes. So, there will be some fluidity within our estimate. Now, what I'm going to—. Why I'm putting this honestly on the table to you is that this is not a matter of suspicion; it's a matter of mutual understanding of how we achieve these figures and what our best estimate will be of figures that we are putting in six months in advance of those figures being solidified, and six months in front of things like procurement having happened and exactly how much things are going to cost, like a brochure, for example. So, we are doing our best and being as reasonable as possible, but I think, at some point, we have to have some sort of panel, perhaps, or a get-together to understand exactly the challenges of setting this budget before 30 September, and coming to you well before that, say in July, with even more floating numbers.

So, with that, I hope that I have therefore put in front of you our challenges, but they are not insurmountable. I'm sure that we can find a way through this, through mutual understanding, because we all have a mutual respect for what we're trying to do and how to achieve it properly. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you. Before I quickly respond, I think Janet Finch-Saunders actually has just joined us, not yet visible online—there she is. So, welcome, Janet.

Sorry, Dirprwy Lywydd. The joining link that was sent wasn't working.

We are public, Janet, so we're okay.

Okay.

You're there. Everything will be controlled by the centre.

Okay. Thank you.

On a couple of the points you highlighted, I think the challenge you talked about with regard to the budget is something we can reflect upon, and the timings clearly are important. As you quite rightly pointed out, I think the issue of the UK Government's budget just gone, and the implications that has for salaries and wages and funding and staffing, which is something we probably would raise with you in this meeting, actually, is something that is very valid to think about.

I don't think we're averse to any supplementaries, because there are supplementary budgets from the Government. I think what we were averse to were last-minute supplementaries, which are slightly different, and the need to have communication with us. But we do recognise some of the challenges you will be having. I won't be here in 15 years' time, but I'm sure that trends will be seen over that time and, therefore, those spikes you talked about are something that we're starting to see and are understandable when there's a Welsh election, for local government or the Senedd, and even Welsh referenda that might occur as well. So, we understand those issues, because that's something that's happened, when the funding has come to us more recently, where you have to split it up clearly. But, yes, you're right that data will show us, over a period of time, the trends.

Our question, obviously, is to look at what we have in front of us and to see how it works and what it's for and how we can justify and say that it's value for money, and that's what our role is. So, in that sense, we understand your challenges, but I'm sure you understand our challenges as well.

Yes, of course. Of course.

Okay. I think that's it. Let's move on to some of the questions, in that case. And I suppose that question of communication becomes critical, because last year we highlighted very much the need for strong communication. I want to try and just ask the question: have you put yourselves in a position now where you think the communication has improved, that we are being kept up to date with the information that we need to know in advance of this, and the decision making within Wales? Because we've had the meetings, you've been to the Senedd a couple of times as well, so is the communication, as far as you are concerned, improving? Because we'll answer the question afterwards, obviously, but is the communication improving? Have you actually set things in place to ensure that we don't have the same situation as we had last year, where last-minute things happened?

Could I just do the overall comment before handing over to the chief executive? We have six months in front of us where we are dealing with a corporate plan for the UK Government. There are implications within that as to our ambition as a commission over the whole of the United Kingdom, as well as our ambitions in Wales. I think that we need to set in motion diary markers for coming to you over the next six months, so that we understand mutually some of the steps that we are going to take in setting that corporate plan. But I agree with you, Dirprwy Lywydd, that I think we have to admit that we were late in the day in coming to you with enough discussion about our upcoming budgets, some of which we wrongly kind of assumed to be obvious, and some of which we couldn't come to you on any earlier because of a lack of data. But I do think that, over the next six months, this is the chance for us to jointly look at the corporate plan that will take us over the next five years. And even then, there is a little bit of a problem because the corporate plan of the Welsh Senedd and the timing of the UK Government's corporate plan are not aligned—they're a year out. So, the more we understand each other’s challenges, the better. If I can turn to Vijay.

Thank you. Just to very much echo what Elan has said, we have three processes starting up now. First of all, consultation with you and other stakeholders on the UK-wide corporate plan. So, we will be showing you—. The corporate plan estimate here is an envelope for year 1. Obviously, the corporate plan for the whole UK is a five-year plan, and we'd very much like to discuss with you what needs to be done for Welsh voters in that plan. There will be a large section of it. The second will be developing the Wales corporate plan, which will then follow the election in 2026. But sandwiched between these two corporate plans is, obviously, the work on the 2026 election itself. We've given you our best stab at the envelope for the spend we will need to really run a successful and really important set of changes that Elan has set out for the 2026 election, but that will change a lot over the next year as we get into procurement, as we really push on value for money, and as we look at the changed circumstances. So, we'd very much want to work with you and make sure there are no surprises in what we are going to be spending to ensure a really successful 2026 election. So, I think, in all these three things, we are absolutely open to coming and discussing with you—in whatever form you find useful, or your officials, informally or formally—all the assumptions we're making on that. And then you can test them for whether they meet your needs and those of Welsh voters, and value for money.

We're more than happy to, obviously, have those discussions on the corporate plan, because we recognise that the 2026 elections, which will take place in the 2026-27 financial year, and the 2027 council elections, where we assume automatic registration will be in place by then, will have some challenges. We need to have that discussion so that the corporate plan deals with those. And if you're talking about five years, then it can clearly include the preparation for the following, because elections for the Senedd will change from five to four years as well. So, from 2025 will take us up to actually the next Senedd elections, effectively. Rhydian.

Just in terms of direct communications with the Llywydd's Committee itself, we did send you a comms plan following on from the meeting, the scrutiny session last November, which outlined quarterly in-person briefings and quarterly written briefings to the committee, as well as additional activities, and I think we've stuck to that. We would have, possibly, liked to have done more over the course of the summer just gone, but the general election came along and, I think, took us all by surprise to a degree. But what we propose is, we would send the committee, once again, a revised comms outline for the coming year, and we'd really welcome having discussions with you, especially on our planning work for the Senedd elections, and part of that, of course, will be relating to the campaign and the household booklet and everything else. So, we'd want the plan to be enhanced, moving forward.

Okay, thank you for that. And we welcome the updated plan you have for those discussions and communications. 

If we move on a little bit, there's one more from me and then I'll open up to my colleagues. I suppose it's a question with regard to your role with the communications group for 2026. Can you expand upon that as to what your role is in that communications group?

Yes, I can maybe start. There was some concern at the last set of Senedd elections about the lack of co-ordination amongst all of the various groups that were involved in working with campaigns. Ahead of the elections themselves, there wasn't any co-ordination. What we've done is, we've already had conversations with the Senedd Commission around what we will all be doing ahead of 2026, and marked out what it is the commission will be doing. So, we've agreed, for example, that we'll be focusing on voter registration and voter information, and we'll be looping the Senedd Commission in on that. And also, importantly, that we'll focus on the paid campaign side of things, so there's no duplication of work or duplication of costs.

Those discussions have started already, and I think that's worked out very well. We'll be wanting to bring more partners into those discussions as we move forward, and as we've a clearer idea of what our campaign, especially, will look like for 2026. And that then will hopefully allow us to be able to produce and publish resources, assets, all of the supporting material that those groups will need and can use for their work ahead of 2026. So, I think we’ve started that process now, alongside the Senedd Commission, and it’s been, I think, an effective group. We want to see that snowballing and building up, especially over the course of 2025, so that everyone knows what they’re going to be doing for those elections.

Thank you for that because, again, not only are we discussing your budget proposals, but in a couple of weeks’ time, the Senedd Commission’s budget will be coming before the Senedd, so it’s important for us to understand where there is no overlap, and that everyone has a specific purpose, and that funding, therefore, is allocated and it won’t be duplicated. Okay. Llyr.

Maybe I could just answer that question, and thank you, it’s a core question. So, we’ve broken down our budget into three separate areas, and let me just run briefly through those, and I’ll explain any increase. The first, of course, is our core budget, which I’m glad the Wales contribution of that has decreased, and that’s partly through the efficiencies that we have sought—and I can set those out if helpful—and it’s partly through falling back onto the agreed cost-sharing mechanism and then running that rather more rigorously. We have done so with the help of our internal auditors as well, to make sure that we’ve run the attribution mechanism on the core budget to Wales, to Scotland and to Westminster really clearly and accurately.

The second is a small increase, as I mentioned, on the corporate plan, but that is really to cover what is a sort of known unknown, and some known knowns, which is what we’re going to be doing in the next financial year for the UK Government and the UK as a whole. Clearly, some things are still taking shape in Westminster; we don’t know exactly what’s coming. We do know we have to do quite a lot of scoping work, and a lot of that is going to actually build on the lessons we’ve learnt in Wales, particularly on votes at 16, particularly on the excellent work done here on education, which has scaled up tremendously, and, of course, on the automatic registration pilots that we’re going to be doing here.

By far the biggest increase, and the absolute bulk of all the increase is, as Elan and Rhydian have said, the work for the Senedd elections. We've worked out that that increase is basically about 38p per head of electors in Wales. It’s broken down into a registration campaign, and this is part of the discussion that Rhydian’s had with the Senedd Commission. We will do the paid-for part of this very much. So, that is tv advertising—it’s advertising on many channels, which Niki may want to go into—and it is also the booklet that we aim to send to every household in Wales, to provide an absolutely democratic level playing field for all households and everyone to see this. They’re not cheap, and I’m afraid the cost of those has gone up significantly. Our nearest comparators—and we’ve been working through the value for money on this—are, for example, the London elections, which went up 60 per cent in three years from 2021 to 2024. We worry that there is an even higher inflationary set of drivers at the moment. We are aiming, at the moment, for quite a major piece of explanatory material—so, about 20 pages, I think, is our working assumption—to explain the new voting system, to explain what voters have to do, and to be as helpful as possible. We’ve budgeted for that. That’s clearly a significant part of the costs.

The third part is the work, as I said, on getting our message out, where we’ll be aiming for some new channels. We have to refresh all our assets, i.e. re-record, put in the dates of registration, put in material specific to the Senedd elections. And there are more assets than ever before, because we’re trying to use in-game assets, we’re trying to use a lot of new ways to reach the voters who have proved traditionally quite hard to reach, particularly the younger people coming onto the register and so on. So, just to give you a sense of the scale of this spend—you've got the absolute numbers there—the booklet will cost something like 26p per household to get that booklet in. That's including paper, printing and then delivery. And then the campaign—this is the paid-for tv advertising and other channels—will be about 33p per person, and that's just spread around the total population. All of those are upper limits. We will try to bring them down, depending on inflation, depending on whether we can, say, reduce the size of the booklet, depending on whether we can—. Obviously, we will go to tender. We will go to tender across the UK and in Wales and try to go for the best value-for-money tender we can, but it is difficult to see, really, almost a year to 18 months ahead, what exactly those costs are going to be, so we've given you outer-limit estimates of what we're going to potentially need to run a really successful election. As I say, the driver is, then, fundamentally the booklet and the tv advertising and other campaigns for the 2026 Senedd election.

Thank you. Sorry, I should have come on to that. We can scale these costs back. I think we certainly will be scaling them back as we get into tendering. As I say, I hope we can come out substantially lower. If we actually reduced the cost of the booklet, that would mean shrinking it. It might mean using different procurement, and we can try and do that. We clearly don't want to not send the booklet to every household in Wales. On the bigger costs of tv and advertising, we would simply use fewer channels and fewer assets and scale that back. What that just tends to do is reduce the reach that we have into the communities who don't see this, voters who don't see this. It's a sliding scale and we can of course scale that back, but would strongly prefer not to. Because of the changes being made to the Senedd electoral system and others, we think it's very important to get this message out to the maximum number of people. We will, later on, once we've tendered, have options for how many people to reach, and we're very happy to share that openly about the choices we'll be making on where in that sort of curve of cost and impact we think is the right place to be. There are always choices as to how much we actually spend, and we try to go for the maximum value for money on those. Before I go on, I wonder if Niki wants to add more.

I would just add that, on the campaign, it is weighted towards under-registered groups. So, the weighting is 70 per cent towards under-registered groups versus 30 per cent to a mass audience, and that means we're reducing wastage from people who are already registered and don't need to see the campaign. So, we're already thinking really carefully about value for money, about the types of channels that we use, and who the campaign is targeted at, as I say, so that we're ensuring best value for money. With that in mind, the only thing we can cut, as Vijay has said, is opportunities to see the campaign, and we know that that would have an impact on engagement and, potentially, on turnout and on registration figures as well.

Seventy per cent of what, sorry, on unregistered groups? Obviously, there are two things in play here. One is encouraging people to register, but the other bit is explaining to everyone, whether registered or not, how the new system will work. So, when you say there's a 70/30 split, is that across the whole publicity budget?

That's across the paid-for advertising budget, so that's for the campaign. The booklet will be used to explain the system changes, and that will be sent to every household, so the budget for that is aimed at all electors in Wales.

Can I come in here, Llyr? Could I just add to that? I think you and I have had an informal talk about the booklet recently, just because we happened to meet each other. It's a thorny one, because it is a huge amount of money, an amount of public money, but it brings us all down to the issue of universality, doesn't it? How do we reach everybody? How do we actually put hand on heart and say, 'We have gone to every possible voter, including those who may be digitally deprived, who are not digitally included, and therefore unable to participate without some sort of physical thing.' And it's a hard one, but I think the commission has a right to also advise Parliament and to advise the Senedd, and in our opinion, I think that, for this election, we should still maintain the physical booklet.

I've reflected on that myself, because I think you're probably right, personally. I think it's the only way that you can look people in the eye and say, 'Everybody has had this information.' Whether they've chosen to read it or not is different. You don't depend on people stumbling across it online or in advertising, or whatever. But I wasn't necessarily questioning the legitimacy of a booklet, I was just wondering how you came to that division of expenditure in terms of 70 per cent for targeting non-registered people as opposed to maybe looking at a percentage of funding towards raising the profile, if you know what I mean. Am I explaining myself?

Yes. So, sorry, to be clear, that split is just for the paid-for advertising campaign. That doesn't include the booklet. It's a relatively new approach, and it's something that we've been doing for other elections as well. We're led by data. So, our agency are able to tell us which channels are best able to reach those audiences that are under-registered. And actually, we are starting to see that message get through. So, one of the things that we measure is campaign recognition, and we are starting to see that with some of the under-registered groups, such as, for instance, young people and also some people from ethnic minority groups. We're seeing that campaign recognition is better. So, this weighting does appear to be working. And the registration campaign is having good results. We saw a million people apply to register during the May elections. We saw 2 million people apply to register during the general election—the shortened general election registration campaign. So, it does appear to be working.

Okay. Llyr, before I come back, can I ask one question on this? I understand what you're saying, and the question I would ask is: whilst we're encouraging people to register, this is a different form of election coming up to ones that have gone in the past. So, things they may have been used to, things their families may have been used to will be different. So, I'm just wondering whether 70 per cent on getting just those who aren't registered to register and 30 per cent on getting everyone who is registered to understand the change is getting the balance correct.

Just to be clear, I've got a copy of the 2021 booklet here if anyone wanted to see it. The booklet focuses on three key areas. Yes, there's information there on the new voting system, how to cast your vote, what to expect in the polling station, but there's also information in there on registration—why you need to be registered, how to register, when you register by. There's information in there on the Senedd itself—the work of the Senedd, the work of Senedd Members, the changes that will be happening—because we know that awareness of the Senedd and its work remains lower than we'd like it to be. So, it's quite a comprehensive booklet, and we'd want to work with the Senedd Commission and others, including yourself, in ensuring that the content that's included there is as appropriate as it needs to be to go out to all of Wales, every household in Wales. So, it's quite a comprehensive booklet, and it doesn't just focus on the change to the voting system.

And to be clear, it's not just the booklet that we'll be using, we'll also be replicating that online. So, it will be available digitally. And we'll be doing lots of work with the media, where we have much more space and time to unpack some of our messaging. So, whereas with some of our advertising we have to focus on a very simple message, with the media work that we do, we're able to expand that much more. We'll be able to explain some of the changes to that mass audience. And, of course, there isn't a cost implication for that, that's earned media.

Llyr.

Thank you. Let me start on that. We've been looking very carefully at the cost of these. About 60 per cent is an actual inflationary cost. That seems to be what we've seen in the London Elects booklet, and that was from 2021 to 2024, and that is a cost of inflation in paper, in printing, and in delivery, which has gone up significantly. Part of it is a contingency, and we're going to, as I say, try and bring that down, and part of it is relating to a series of future choices I think we will need to collectively make. For example, we would like, for the reasons Rhydian's given, to be able to deliver that booklet substantially earlier than was done before the 2021 election because there is such a system change, because we'd like to get that out well before the registration deadline to everyone.

So, that really summarises the £375,000 we are asking for in 2025-26. Last time round, we spent £118,000 in 2020-21, and £121,000 in 2021-22. It was split across the two financial years, because a substantial amount of the booklets fell into the second financial year. We're aiming to frontload that much more. So, just to compare like with like, we think we are asking for about a 119 per cent increase in the cost, and more than half of that is inflationary. The rest is based on a contingency, and just to make sure that, if necessary, we can do it all in this financial year. And that, I think, is probably what we're aiming for. Again, that will come down to the options that we have, really, a year from now, in about October, when we're actually into tendering and moving further on. I completely recognise it's a significant increase, but we will try and bring that cost down as much as we possibly can. It still will hopefully be less than the 28p or so per household that I mentioned. Niki.

Yes, absolutely, I agree. Thank you, Vijay.

Peredur's got a supplementary.

Thank you for that explanation. You talked about contingency there. Is that contingency, then, ring-fenced for the booklet, or will you then use it somewhere else if you don't use it? So, basically, will we see that coming back to us if you don't use it, or will you reallocate it within your budget to somewhere else? How do you handle that? Because other directly funded bodies that I deal with at the Finance Committee sometimes ask for a contingency on the proviso that it will then be paid back to the consolidated fund if it's not used. So, maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Of course. And it's exactly what you describe. The money we're asking for for the booklet, for the campaigns, for the event is ring-fenced for the event, and would not be drawn down unless it was necessary for that in consultation with you and with others on the financing of this. This money, for the Senedd—because it's coming, obviously, directly for the Senedd elections—won't be used for our core costs and won't be used for the corporate plan, which is why we split this into three completely separate sections. So, we won't reallocate this to other things.

Yes, but within that event, you'll have tv advertising, you'll have other forms, not just the booklet, so does that mean if you underspend on your 119 per cent that you've added on the booklet, would you shift that money over, possibly, to tv advertising or to online advertising, to cover that aspect of it, rather than say, 'Well, actually, that's ring-fenced for that particular thing', because you haven't worked that out?

We wouldn't. So, we try to give you separate itemised budgets for all of this. I certainly can't see us going higher, for example, on the campaign costs than the money we've put in here, but, as I say, we've tried to give you the upper estimates of what could be needed. We're hoping to bring both of those down, and if there's an underspend and we don't need that amount of money, we just simply won't draw it down at all.

Diolch.

Llyr.

Yes, diolch. Finally from me, then, Chair—[Inaudible.]—the commission's letter notes that £1.3 million has been allocated for core business and £1.2 million for direct event costs, but I can't reconcile those figures in the 2025-26 estimate. So, I'm just wondering if you could explain how the core business costs and the direct event costs have been allocated in the estimate, because I can't pick them out according to those themes in what's been provided.

I wonder if I could come back to you in writing just explaining how exactly we have calculated these. In a sense, what we've done with the core event cost is to take the commission-wide costs, and the reason for doing that and not—. And having watched and listened to your previous commentaries and recommendations, and we can run through how we've taken those forward, we've tried to use exactly the formula set out in the funding memorandum approved and noted by the three Parliaments. So, we've taken all the core costs for the whole commission and simply allocated that 4.6 per cent for Wales based on population.

The event costs are entirely ring-fenced for Wales and based on what I've set out as the campaign and so on costs. The corporate plan is the least pinned down, because it is based on what we think we will need with the corporate plan. I'll come to the themes and what we're going to spend on that, but primarily, it's about education and part of voter-facing digital information, which is what we think we need to do in the next financial year to prepare for the 2026 elections and beyond.

We've tracked exactly those costs, because this has been through quite a rigorous process internally, both of challenge and internal challenge, and, as I say, bringing in our internal auditors as well. But let me come back and explain exactly how we've broken that down. So, the table, I think, attached to Elan's and my letter reflects exactly where we are, if that's all right.

Yes. Diolch. Thank you.

Peredur.

I'll just take you back to a few things you said earlier, just before we move on. You've talked about 33p per person on tv advertising or tv, you've talked about 38p per elector as a figure, and then you've also talked about 26p per household. It's just a little bit confusing that you're using different things; it is not really comparing apples with apples. So, which one of those should we be looking at? Maybe you could draw a line for us that says, of that 38p per elector, how much of that is then the 33p per person, and then how much of that is 26p per household. Just some clarification, if you've got that sort of information.

We've got the tables of all of that, and I can send you the complete set. The reason why we break them down is, obviously, the booklet will be per household. We don't quite know how many people it will reach within each household, but that is just broken down per household for the universality point that Elan referred to, whereas the way that we're measuring the impact of our digital and other advertising is the number of people we actually reach multiple times over. Obviously, we need to reach people quite a few times for the message to sink in, and with the right assets and deadlines at the right time. So, that we tend to measure per person that we're reaching. But I can send you the entire—

So, it's not per person in Wales, it's per person every time, so it could be millions of times, I suppose, or thousands of times. 

Absolutely. We're hoping to touch many people many times over, particularly the more underrepresented groups, in the advertising, which is one reason why they're harder to reach, so we will be focusing the paid-for advertising on them. For the hardest to reach groups, we're also then expanding work with various partners, for example disability charities or the RNIB, or homelessness charities, because we don't actually reach them very well with either paid-for advertising or with the household booklet. We will need to go through partner organisations who really have channels deep in. So, it's all three.

There's part of an art and part of a science in the judging of this. The track record comes, really, from the last general election and, in particular, the work we did on voter ID. We've published a full report on our voter ID spend, which was, obviously, quite significant across the UK, because it was the first time for a general election that voter ID came in. But we were really glad that, because we actually did this differential balancing, we ended up with awareness rates across the whole UK at about 89 per cent to 90 per cent, and, obviously, we started from a very different point. Northern Ireland has had it for 20 years, and Scotland hadn't had anything, but we managed to achieve, basically, parity across the UK on voter ID. But we did so by extremely different targeting of the different audiences.

If I could add, Peredur, in some ways, your question posits the wrong challenge, if I may say so, because when you say that we are comparing apples with pears and not giving you understandable comparators, the truth is they are apples and they are pears. So, there is a household cost and there is an individual cost per population, and there is also a cost of voters over 16 and they are separate bundles of people. So, it's just the complexity of trying to get the message over in multiple ways.

What I was trying to ascertain is do you then add all these costs together, or is it the same number being divided different ways. So, it's that sort of trying to get a comparator to understand where that money is going, and by doing it this way, where the focus is. Because dividing by a different denominator every time, it changes the focus. I was trying to get an understanding of what priority is being given to different aspects.

Maybe it'd be helpful if I break it down entirely by voter: 22p would go on the campaign per voter and that would be the paid-for tv spend, and so on; 11p would go on the voter booklet, and obviously, then, that scales up to two or three voters per household and that's why you get to 28; and about 5p for digital comms and a bit of others. So, actually, the digital comms, as we all know, is moderately cheap; the expensive part is usually the tv advertising, but it reaches a large number. So, yes, double—we're spending 22p on the campaign, 11p on the voter booklet and 5p on digital. That's exactly on the same baseline and the same denominator.

That's helpful. Thank you. Diolch.

Thank you. Llyr, are you finished, before I go on to Janet? Do you want a supplementary on this point, Janet?

Well, just generally on all the points that have been raised. I've been listening. And sorry I was late earlier, I just had some technical problems. But can I just ask the commission exactly how much more you're asking for for the Senedd reform elections than was published in the RIA for the actual Bill?

The detail we provided in the regulatory impact assessment and the detail we were asked to provide related to new activities and responsibilities placed on the commission as a result of the legislation. There may be some new activities, there may be some new work that we'll need to do, and these mainly relate to guidance, given the change to the voting system. But in terms of public awareness, this is not new activity, it's existing statutory activity and we'd be presenting the committee with this area of work and these costs even if the legislation hadn't been passed. This has been our approach to campaigning since 2011, 2016 and 2021, we've run a—

But there's a cost to Senedd reform and it's fair to say that we've raised our own concerns as a group. Given the current pressure on people, there is opposition to Senedd reform; my group has been leading on that opposition. That said, it's gone ahead, there's been a democratic vote, and obviously, we're part of that process. But I cannot justify the increase that you're asking for. So, I thought I'd listen today so that you could persuade me that what you're asking is reasonable, and I'm still yet to be convinced. Tell me, what am I missing?

What I would say is, again, the costs that we've presented relate to what our campaign activity would generally be. But this is more significant this time around; we do have changes there, it's even more important now that we present those changes to the electorate, especially in terms of how they will be casting their vote. So, I think that that means that this activity is even more worth while. But again, these costs aren't as a result of the new legislation.

I think what Janet's trying to get at is if there hadn't been Senedd reform, how much of this additional cost for this year would have been in place. 

For the campaign?

Well, for the campaign—

It would be the same activity that we would be presenting you with and the same costs.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. So, the fact that there are going to be 36 extra Members, say, which seems to be a large bone of contention, and the costs that come with that—. So, if there had been the same numbers, going forward, if it was a 60-Member election, if you like, what extra increases would you be asking for in relation to those?

It would be the same estimate. The costs are for the campaign and for the booklet. We would still be running this campaign and we would still be producing a booklet, even if this legislation hadn't been presented. 

So, the fact that there are 36 Members extra definitely does not impact on your budget at all. 

No. 

Just to add on this, the costs are primarily driven, particularly for the booklet, by the costs of printing and sending it to all the households. Obviously, the number of households has gone up slightly, but that's the main cost driver. In terms of the campaign costs and the tv advertising and so on, the main drivers there are the inflationary ones. We will still be trying to do a broad-ranging campaign. The one issue that it has done is that we need to, actually, refresh a lot of the material that we've got and make sure that it does reflect all of the changes in the Senedd. So, we need to rewrite that, but we will absorb those parts of the costs in the rewriting internally. We will need to get a lot of the creative parts, voiceovers and all the other things redone, and there is a cost to that. But we would need to be redoing them probably just given other changes and make sure that the campaign is up to date for the Senedd election. We know people respond much better when the information they're being given is seen to be up to date and gives the actual dates, for example, of registration that they have to follow, so we need to be refreshing that anyway. So, we can absorb some of this. The overall amount we would be asking you for would not change very much, because it's based on reaching a large part of the Welsh population and reaching all households. 

And the fact that we're changing the voting system completely and going from first-past-the-post to a proportional representation methodology doesn't cause you any increase in costs either. 

We will need to rewrite all of that section with you and with others in Wales to make sure it's clear, and we'll absorb that, yes. 

But that's the point I'm asking. So, there is a cost. What cost is that?

I think it's just the internal staff costs of our teams having to go through and rewrite a large amount of guidance. But, as we said in the regulatory impact assessment, we'll absorb that, because we would anyway be refreshing the guidance. It's a significant piece of work that we have then programmed into our work programme. 

If I can just then register my objection to the increase in the budget, because I am not convinced that the costs that you are seeking are justified and I have to put that on record.  

Can I just add to that, Janet? I take your point, because I know how concerned you are about this issue, and, of course, the number of people in the Senedd is not a matter for us and we have no bearing on it. However, what we are trying to reach, as a commission, is the electorate; it is not about the number of Members. So, if you have 20 Members, if you have 40 Members, if you have 80 Members, we have to reach the electorate, and we have to tell them and encourage them to vote. So, our work is mainly to do with reaching the voters who will vote for you. And one of the main costs of this increase, which I hope you would not want to object to, is that—. If you look at the Greater London Authority booklet, for example, and I'll give you the stark figures, the cost in 2021 was £2.5 million for the GLA booklet that went out to every elector. The cost for 2024 was £4 million. So, that shows you the inflationary rises that have occurred in paper and in delivery during that time. At the nub of this, if you are objecting, you would object to having universality of brochures, and that is not a good place for us to be recommending.   

Janet has expressed her view. We'll have that discussion amongst the committee. 

I'll come back on that, if I may—

No, Janet—

I'd like to make this point that that explanation—. I want to make it clear the one thing I've always been very keen on is greater engagement with the public and the voters, because, certainly up here in the north, people still don't understand devolution, and, as a keen advocate for devolution, it is important you are reaching out to all the voters with the new voting system and the additionality, so I do appreciate what you've just said. 

Thank you. 

And just for clarity, the campaign costs you've put down would have been for any campaign you would be preparing for a Senedd election, minus some minor changes for consideration of different—. It's the message that's changing, effectively.

Yes. 

That's it. It needs rewriting completely. 

Okay. Joyce. 

Thank you. You did report that you were going to learn some lessons from the previous financial cycle—you mentioned that at the very start—and you also said that budget models have been rebuilt and semi-automated to reduce the risk of errors. Can you elaborate on how you've gone about achieving those two things?

Thank you. We've tried to make sure that we are, first of all, actually working out what we need to spend and testing whether that is value for money in each case. So, for each of these various budgets we've put forward, we now have a fully functioning procurement team in the commission and we're looking at the commercial case. We're doing the standard five-case model. We're looking at the commercial and procurement case for each of these to try to make sure that we're procuring in the right way.

We're increasingly looking at the Government frameworks for procurements, because they radically, in some cases, reduce the cost of procurement that we have. Then we've taken those numbers and run them—obviously, amalgamating them all through—. We've looked at, for the corporate plan costs, the next five years, so we've tried to look as far ahead as we can and allocate that into years, and then we've gone through a testing process with our internal auditors and internally to make sure that those numbers are as clear as they can be. We have then built in an amount of contingency, as I've already mentioned, for example, on campaign costs.

So, we're trying to make sure that we're capturing all of the costs, and this is partly because one of the problems we've had in the past is, for example, where one part of the commission starts a new set of activity and another part of the commission actually incurs some of the costs, be it on human resources or finance procurement, or just information technology, where we need to provide some new computers for people, and we haven't fully accounted for that. So, we've tried to make sure that we have completely accounted for all of the ancillary costs as well.

We've then tested that model with our internal auditors; we sent them the entire model. They came back and said, 'That is good, make the following changes', so we've made those changes as well, and in that large spreadsheet that's how we've been calculating what we need to do and what we have to spend. Now, we'll clearly keep that up to date, because I think several things will happen. The consultations I've already mentioned on the corporate plans and on the event costs—there will be a lot of learning from our procurements, I think, coming in now, particularly with a very different new procurement framework legally enforced from February, and that we are preparing for, because, clearly, a lot of our procurements will then come after that, and we'll need to rethink these costs from when we go and actually test it in the market.  

You've explained frontloading of budgets pre-election, so we don't need to revisit that. But my question is that you've put two thirds of your budget pre-election and one third post-election, and I'm just interested, really, to know how that allocation has come about. 

Can I just check, do you mean by that on the booklet and the campaign costs?

No, you've said, 'In the whole financial year—'. 

Oh, I see. Rhydian, yes.

Whenever there's a May poll, that means that the voter registration deadline falls in early to mid April. We run the majority of the campaign in March, but that campaign does bleed into the first half of April, as well as the booklet itself, so that's why we have to cover two financial years. Again, the majority of the work—two thirds of the work—would be in the first financial year, and the rest of it in April, in essence, and a couple of days, maybe, in May.

Okay, so that's the reason for that.

Yes.

I think a lot of the other questions have already been asked that I was thinking of, which is not a great surprise.

Peredur.

Can I just come in? Just following on from Joyce's question around what have you learnt from potential mistakes or missteps in the past, obviously we've had a couple of testy meetings with you over the last couple of years. What have those lessons been, what's been put in place, and how do we see the relationship developing over the remainder of this Senedd term and into the next Senedd? 

Maybe I could just say three, if that's not going too far. The first is longer term better financial planning for us. We have started that with the core process of this next UK corporate plan, and that’s the material we’d very much like to come and discuss. We’ll continue the same process with the Wales corporate plan. Being able to give an overview of the five years rather than look at it as an annualised budget will also help with your planning, but also helps us spread and go for the best value for money and sequencing of the spend. So, we do need better longer term planning.

The second is some training, upskilling and better internal challenge systems in our own finance and procurement areas. We’ve already begun that. We have just recruited a new head of financial planning. We have a new procurement team now in place and going through all of our contracts. The upskilling comes because we made a mistake, to be very honest, on international financial reporting standard 16 and the actual implementation for two of our leases in the last year. That’s the reason why, though our accounts were broadly—. Well, our accounts were accurate and we have followed all the rules, but we did not correctly budget for an IFRS 16 capital expenditure on our two leases. This is the whole-of-lifetime costs. So, in particular, our new staff, but also upskilling and making sure that the continuing professional development of our existing staff continues will be very important. We have a new chief operating officer, a corporate director, starting, Chris Pleass, who brings an enormous range of finance expertise, starting actually next Monday, which we’re very much looking forward to. I’m sure he’ll come down and be very happy to come and meet with all of you.

The third area is this focus on procurement and value for money. I do think, as we start to cope with the new procurement frameworks coming in and look at the value for money of our existing contracts and then reprocure many of those, which we will need to do over the next years, we can have some significant improvements in what we do.

You know, most famous catchphrases are in threes, aren’t they? I would say that the lesson I have learnt is engagement, engagement, engagement. From now on, in terms of the UK corporate plan and the way in which we are trying to develop it, we have got to put the dates in place to engage fully with you. There are things that are still very problematic: synchronisation is one of them, mutual understanding of what moneys are actually coming down into your Welsh consolidated fund from the previous Westminster pot, so that not all of this money is coming from Welsh Government in competition with other things that you are funding. So, I think we just need to have a mutual sophistication about how we understand all these figures and how we achieve them, but engagement is of the essence, and I would hope that we can do that.

Okay. Diolch. 

Thank you for that. I’ve got a question about that; I’ll come back to Llyr in a minute. You talk about core materials and governance, and yet in your figures, devolution, governance and law has decreased by 70 per cent. It’s quite a dramatic decrease. Because you mentioned you’ve had decreases. But if we are talking about devolution, governance and law being decreased by that much, does it actually mean that you can still deliver for Wales? Because that’s quite a jump, a 70 per cent drop on devolution, governance and law.

In short, it does. It means no diminution in what we’re actually doing for Wales or in Wales. We’re certainly not affecting Rhydian’s team or anything like that. What it is is about how we’re allocating the actual core expenditure. In the past, I think you’ve had some criticisms of this in this committee in the past. We had built in elements of that as if it was preferentially for Wales, whereas actually it should simply sit as part of the core costs of the commission. That’s the reason for those. They’re broadly stable costs, those. So, the 70 per cent does not indicate a change of activity. It’s part of the way we’ve tried to work through, as I said, in a different way, going back to the original funding memorandum, how we’ve done the allocation of costs.

So, that’s more of a, shall we say, accounting procedure that decides how to allocate certain elements of costs, and less therefore on devolution, governance and law to a Welsh-specific situation—

Exactly.

—and more to your UK-specific situation.

It's the population.

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Some of the questions we've got you've already answered in our discussions, but I want to go on to some of the indirect costs we haven't yet possibly explored. Llyr. 

Diolch, Cadeirydd. I just wanted to pursue a few elements within the indirect costs, really. You're budgeting for an increase in IT costs, which includes improving IT security, which, obviously, is something that always has been and is always a risk, really. So, how confident are you now that you could, for example, prevent cyber attacks in future?

Thank you. I should start by saying thank you very much indeed for the money that you gave us, and other Parliaments gave us, after our cyber attack—unsuccessful cyber attack. So, since then, we have spent—. I think immediately after that we spent about £0.6 million. We then spent a one-off cost of £1.3 million, which was a significant replacement of our kit. We think the ongoing costs are going to be about £0.4 million. Those have bought us, essentially, a move of all our data into the cloud, with really very heavy-duty cyber security around it—so, that's particularly full multi-factor authentication for all of our devices. We have a whole lot of new firewalls—in fact, we have such heavy firewalls that now and then they decide they're not going to talk to each other. But those are good. We have full e-mail scanning via Mimecast, and we've just tested that entire system. So, we're working very closely with the National Cyber Security Centre. We've tested it and we came through with no vulnerabilities. Now, that is a moment in time. We're glad of that, because we came under a really massive cyber attack in the run-up to the general election. I think, on a couple of days, we had nearing 10,000 attacks on our systems to try to bring them down. We had a couple of very big denial-of-service attacks as well—none of which succeeded, which was good. 

We still have a little more to do, and that's the £0.4 million we're doing in this financial year. So, we need to do a complete move to Windows 11. We need to build our disaster recovery mechanisms. At the moment—I won't go into all the detail here, but—we don't have enough back-up sites, and we're doing quite a lot on that. And we have increased our monitoring, so we know where these are coming from—and, again, this is working very closely with the cyber security world.

The final part of the work on this is, while we are now, I could put it, modelly armoured up, we want to help the political parties across the UK do the same, who have some serious cyber vulnerabilities in many cases, but, also, obviously, have access to the electoral register, rightly. So, as we look at the whole system and where the vulnerabilities are on cyber defence, we think we can play a part in helping the political parties, with the cyber security centre and others, to make sure all of our democratic systems get more resilient. Because this is one of the threats that I'm afraid we don't think is going to go away.

No, quite. It's always going to be there and it's—. I was going to say 'staying ahead of the game'—it's probably keeping up, isn't it?

That's what we're trying, yes.

Yes. Okay, thank you. Can I just ask as well—? You're asking for an initial £25,000, which, you say, results from flow through of the 2024-25 pay increase. Can you just expand on the reasons for that increase? What is that?

So I think that is—. The pay increase—

It's the £25,000 resulting from the flow through of the pay increase.

Ah. So, we matched what the broader civil service did in the last financial year and gave staff a 5 per cent consolidated pay increase based on what inflation was, and I think that is just the continuation of that into our overall pay budgets in the next financial year. The element that we haven't spent on, and, obviously, we won't draw down—it'll come back to you and to the other Parliaments in this financial year—is we haven't managed to progress the pay review, which, you remember, you funded for us last year, mostly because it's taking time, it's a big and complex piece of work and very important, but also the general election did interrupt several elements of work and some of our internal processes were paused by that. But that we're just moving into the next financial year, so, hopefully, we will be able to actually do and implement our full pay review in the next financial year. 

Because you estimate, in that context, 2.7 per cent for the pay review implementation, and 2.5 per cent based on inflation.

Exactly.

How have you calculated the 2.7 per cent then, and how confident are you that that's there or thereabouts?

We're moderately confident it's there or thereabouts. We have a professional consultancy working with us on the pay review—two—Dearden and QCG, who have been incredibly helpful. The way we've calculated it is we've used the likely Office for National Statistics figure for inflation next year, which is 2.5 per cent. I think that's the best estimate, so that's what we anticipate we'll probably need for an inflationary rise for our staff. The way we've calculated the pay review section is to assume that we will be giving staff performance pay, and this is one of the things where the commission has been unusual. We don't give staff any real-terms pay increases or performance pay at the moment. The pay review is going to introduce a form of performance pay, and so the implementation costs of this are for several years as we introduce it, but reducing each year. Obviously, in a mature performance pay system, the net cost every year is zero, because that will be recycled in by staff, but as we introduce this, there is a temporary period, and what we're basically assuming is that most staff will be getting somewhere around 2 per cent performance pay if their performance is good, and for the vast majority of our staff, it's absolutely excellent. So, we're aiming for something like that, which is very much parallel with the broader public sector.

[Inaudible.]

We're talking not quite bonuses, because that would be non-consolidated pay increases for someone who has spent another year in the commission, say, qualified or grown, and whose performance has been good in that year. We would increase their base pay by—as the rest of the public sector—a performance pay increase, as well as whatever we can give them in terms of an inflationary rise.

Could I just add, as a board member I think it's very, very important for quite small organisations—which in the end, the commission is quite a small organisation in UK terms—to have a progression system for staff, because quite often, there is an incremental ladder and in a good organisation, there's also reduced flow? People are in their jobs for quite a long time, and it's a specialist job after all. And so it is important to have some sort of incentive for people to feel that they can progress within their actual institution. And I think the board feel very strongly that there should be a pay review to address that issue.

So, there's a base pay rise plus, then, something on top. So, it wouldn't be a deflator. If somebody was underperforming, it wouldn't reduce the pay. 

Exactly. I think if someone is falling to the bottom of the performance pay tranches, they would probably get an inflationary pay rise, but nothing more than that. Most staff get a small above-inflation pay rise. And we're still in the process, obviously, of designing and consulting on the system, but we’re broadly comparable with, I think, other public sector pay systems. I’d say one of the curious things, as Elan said, is we haven't had anything like this, which means that many of our staff have actually had a real-terms pay cut quite significantly over the last years, and it has driven significant turnover. I think you've seen on the turnover figures, we've gone from about 21 per cent down to about 14 per cent, and in an organisation like the commission, somewhere between 10 per cent and 15 per cent annual turnover, even that can feel a bit high. It's probably about the right amount, but we monitor that quite closely. Certainly, having a very high turnover, because people can't progress—it’s a small organisation, so they can't be promoted, so they leave—is reducing the specialism and the expertise that I think is probably one of the main things we can bring to the democratic system.

And that's at quite a senior level, because that's when they reach the top of the ladder, and they're stuck there, which as Vijay says, is actually below inflation.

Before I go back to Llyr, obviously we talked about the pay issues, and turnover of staff has been high. You also mentioned that there were gaps in capacity previously, particularly finance is highlighted as one of those areas. How are you progressing with ensuring that those gaps are closing so you have the capacity in the future, in years ahead?

Thank you. I think we have made tremendous strides on finance and procurements. The one area that remains a challenge—and, again, we're pausing on taking final decisions on this because we need to know what's the scale of ambition, particularly, first in Westminster and then here—is on the digital voter offering. If we are entering a world of more assisted or automatic registration, and a significantly online voter offering with things like—. I know you've seen the Democracy Club work, which they do for free for us at the moment, in terms of polling station finders. The Democracy Club are coming to the end of doing it and we would like to take that on and implement that properly for voters to give them the information of where polling stations are, and potentially a list of candidates as well. All of that comes with a certain digital expertise. We have brilliant people working on that but we may need to either call on it, or have a little more in-house, I think, as we transition many of our systems into more digital systems, really. Certainly, parts of registration will probably be like that. If we're calling on, for example, schools' data, as has been tested in Wales, to populate the register, again, we will need some people who can really work with Governments in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Westminster—how do we actually do some of this work? 

So, has the budget included consideration of closing that gap?

At the moment, no, because that is the part that we're just scoping out in 2025-26. If we're going to go with projects like that, I think they would take a while to do and then we would need to close the gap. But we're only really going to bid for that money when we think we're actually going to need people to build some of these digital systems. The one place we are bidding for is the Democracy Club money because we think that needs to be done and the work needs to start now, in order that that system continues smoothly through the 2026 Senedd elections and in the Scottish Parliament elections. We don't want that to fall away because Democracy Club can't continue it.

Okay, thank you. Llyr. 

Yes, still on the indirect costs, if I may. You've allocated £211,000 for corporate plan activity. I'm just wondering how that sum is split between the UK and Welsh corporate plans, if at all. 

That is our estimate for the additional costs of the UK corporate plan in year 2025-26. We're continuing with the costs under implementing the last phases of the Welsh corporate plan, obviously, up to the Senedd elections, so there's nothing additional for that. The UK corporate plan at the moment—and this is where we'd love to come and consult with you and others on—has got five key areas. There is one are we've already discussed that I won't go into, which is strengthening our IT, finance and corporate systems, just to be clear that that continues.

There is a set of threats to elections that we think we need to focus on. In Westminster, there will be a Speaker's commission on abuse and intimidation of candidates, which was something that we saw particularly at the general election. We're going to publish our full post-poll reports on 13 November. That will be a theme because I'm afraid we saw some really unacceptable levels of abuse and intimidation of candidates, and things need to be done about that both online and offline. So, we're working with the police, working with the social media firms and others. 

We very much want to improve registration rates, and again the work you're doing here on automatic registration and the four pilots, which Rhydian and team and others in the commission will be assessing soon, is invaluable for the broader UK work if we're moving to a system of more assisted or automatic registration. And so, there are a number of areas where we think some of these costs will fall, but at the moment the £211,000 is UK corporate plan additional costs in what is quite a scoping transitional year, with the exception of the specific projects I've mentioned, Democracy Club, and then scaling up some of the education work, which, again, your committee has been an enormous supporter of, so thank you. But there is a lot of work on democratic education needed and I think there's a lot of enthusiasm for it, not just because of votes at 16 and engaging new electors, but because we need to help them with the threats on misinformation, disinformation and digital literacy, and also there is a concerning trend about abuse and intimidation being more acceptable by younger voters. So, they think it's more acceptable to abuse politicians the younger they are, and we'll be publishing the full data on this on the thirteenth.

Okay, thank you. You have said, of course, that the apportionment for relevant corporate planning activity may change based on its development, with the likely impact being decreasing the final amount required, something we always like to hear, I'm sure. But what kind of factors would influence that, then? 

I think two things, really. First of all, consultation with you, with the Scottish Parliament and with Westminster. So, we're putting forward a set of projects that we think are necessary. My experience of running projects is that some of them, sometimes, move to the right, and that's almost certainly going to reduce costs. We will try and implement them and particularly protect the ones that are necessary for the 2026 elections. Others are more flexible in timing, and I think we'll have to look at overall feasibility and how they work. So, consultation with you I think is probably one of the main drivers as to what we actually end up doing. And then a little bit is what goes on in the outside world. We are learning all the time from other elections, from the work with social media firms, from other international bodies and other electoral commissions around the world about how we can safeguard elections. And so, trying to draw on their best experience and experiments is really important, and that just is a continual process that we will continue.

So, we're going to refine the corporate plan projects as they go. As I say, we've got two or three we very much want to get started on and do a lot on in 2025-26, but there will be others coming, by far the biggest of which will be a UK revised set of digital tools for the register, building on the ones we have already for absent voting portals and the registration portal.

Can I just add to that, Vijay? We are very much thinking about the Welsh corporate plan as part of this area of work as well. So, the themes that will be included in the UK corporate plan will hopefully translate to what we will see in Wales, post Senedd elections, in 2026. So, we're considering the impact of the strategic objectives, and some of the areas of work on what we'll be wanting to see in Wales. And, of course, there may be other new things that you as a committee, and the wider Senedd, will want us to think about and include in the Welsh corporate plan. So, whilst the focus now is on developing the UK plan, there's still a huge amount of thinking relating to Wales and its impact on our corporate plan here in the Senedd too.

In fairness, you've answered my next question—you pre-empted where I was going. But, obviously, as part of that, you'd imagine, would you, that that would include the development of suitable performance indicators for Wales?

Yes, exactly. And we are doing a moderately comprehensive review of our strategic risk management and our key performance indicators, essentially—what we want to measure on the health of the system and our own performance. And I think our thinking—. This is a little bit of a preview: we'd like to have some basic service indicators. So, we ought to be getting back responses to everything, from letters, to freedom of information requests, to responses on consultation in good time and with high quality—that's the kind of service standards part. But then, in our reporting, following each election, we look at things like trust in elections, we look at the voter experience, we look at how, for example, disabled voters are able to participate, we look at the under-represented groups. And so, some of these system indicators are really important, that we can continue to monitor, and then, with a wide variety of Governments and partners, work on to try to improve them.

And will you therefore ensure that KPIs are actually in your annual report as well—

Yes.

—so we can actually have some measurements that we can discuss? Llyr.

Thank you.

Okay. Joyce.

I was going to move on to the accounts, the outturns, the performance indicators and costs of the commission's new offices. You did publish in 2023-24 accounts that quantified the total expenditure relating to staff costs and goods and services, and also added in the unused funds. Would you be able to publish a detailed breakdown of the outturn against the estimates for Wales, so that we can scrutinise those more rigorously?

I suppose the question is we would like to see—

The breakdown.

—the breakdown of the outturns against your estimates—in other words, how does it work—so we can actually scrutinise as to what worked, where you think you were short, where you actually saved money. It would be good for us to understand how it all fits together.

We have all of that, so I'm sure there's no problem in sharing it with you. Whether we want to publish the whole thing publicly—. But we can certainly share with you the breakdowns, essentially, budget line by budget line, where we've spent, where we haven't spent, where we've moved money between lines. We're very happy to share that.

And finally from me, the new offices, you've moved into them in March. You've given us a cost of £24,000 per annum. Can you update us on the total annual cost of the new offices and how it compares to the previous offices, and the utilisation of those new offices and the maximisation of value for money?

Do you want—

I'm sure we can provide that to the committee after the meeting, yes.

And you've also added in cost potential for future growth, which we'd also be keen to understand. We've talked a lot about that this morning anyway. So, just again to clarify some understanding in that cost of £24,000 per annum and where it's being allocated, specifically just because it's an office-specific budget, so it should be fairly easy to be transparent around the cost.

I can set a little bit out about our overall approach on locations. So, one of the strengths of the commission is we're able to recruit from around the whole of the United Kingdom. Our London offices are now moderately full and well utilised, and that's partly because we have invited the Local Government Boundary Commission for England into those offices, to use up one part that wasn't as used. That's part of the saving on the core costs and part of our efficiency measures. They pay us, I think it's about £100,000 a year, which is then obviously money that you don't have to pay. So, we're trying to save estate costs, which, in London, obviously, are even higher than elsewhere. What that does mean is we can recruit—. And part of the reason for having great offices now in Cardiff is that we can recruit people here to work, but not just necessarily in the team for Wales, but people working on issues around the UK. We have a whole load of people working around all of the UK, but working from home primarily, and we obviously have our offices in Belfast and Edinburgh. And it's really in Edinburgh we probably need to look next at the estate, because it needs a refresh. But, really, what we're doing in each of these cases is trying to strengthen the offices outside London; it's another way of both getting brilliant people to work for us, but also to save some of our costs and to increase our reach and understanding across the UK. So, we're being very location neutral in what we're doing and in our recruitment processes, which is one of the parts of our estate strategy.

Can I, Chair? When you talk about growing and adding value with your staff, which we just talked about in the pay rises and the incremental changes, surely—I'm asking—some of that thinking will be the reallocation of people who have expertise. Cardiff's a very nice place to live, so that must be attractive, and the benefits would be for Wales if you could—. And, of course, it'll be a two-way street there. So, is that built in to your thinking as well?

Absolutely. And I think, currently, we have 10 members of the Electoral Commission in Wales based in the Cardiff office, but we've got five or six—and it's growing—colleagues who are not based in the commission in Wales, but are based in teams across the UK, who are based in the office there. So, it's something we want to develop, as we move forward.

And, of course, this was an opportunity given to us because the lease on the old offices we had in Companies House was coming to an end in any case, so this was grasped as an opportunity to, as you say, make Cardiff more of a centre rather than an outlier, to make it a hub for the commission within the UK, and that's what we're aiming to do. So, I hope there will be good jobs there.

I have two short supplementaries before we get to our 1 o'clock time, so everyone will be brief, please. Peredur first.

Very brief. The Finance Committee is always interested in IFRS, and you mentioned it earlier. Has that issue been resolved? And, I think, from my understanding, it's not going to be a recurring issue. But if you could just say 'yes' or 'no', really, on that.

Thank you. Yes, the issue's been resolved, it won't recur, and we'll make sure we don't make the same mistake again, should we ever take on another lease, which, obviously, we're not intending to at the moment. It was two issues, to be really honest. The first was we returned some money mid year, because we didn't think we needed the capital, because we weren't spending it at that point. Because the general election was coming and other things were coming, we weren't going to spend it on political finance online. So, we returned, I think it was £0.6 million, midway through the year. Because we didn't budget for the IFRS 16 consequentials, we then spent £0.7 million more on that, and that's what took us £0.4 million over our revised control total. Had we not returned the money, we would have been within, but we did. So, it was both a budgetary issue and returning the money and not realising. But, fundamentally, we didn't realise the full impact of accounting for the whole-of-life cost of the assets in the first financial year, which IFRS 16 wants us to do.

Okay, thank you very much.

Janet.

Can I just say, as a member of the audit committee, I was pleased to see, in paragraph 23 of the National Audit Office report, which I think you have in front of you, that there is a specific sentence there that says, clearly, that they do not think that that has impacted on the Welsh budget or on our Welsh performance in any form?

Okay, thank you.

Janet.

Okay. Just on the excellent line of questioning that Joyce has just recently carried out, with regard to office accommodation I'm thrilled, obviously, that we have a presence in Cardiff. I think devolution was in fact supposed to make Cardiff a more central hub, if you like. However, we know, after COVID, a lot of staff are now working from home. I wouldn't mind a paper, if possible, Chair, on the exact use of your offices, in Cardiff and in London, because with some of the points that Joyce raised about costs and things like that, it's imperative now that we're not having just flagship offices at a time when you are always coming to, or it seems to be always—. Certainly, over the past two years, my experience has been that you're always coming, wanting to increase your budget, asking us for more money. And in terms of streamlining, many organisations have streamlined their building costs, business rates, energy costs, and I just wondered, have you yourselves evaluated or carried out any evaluation as to where you might save money by maybe—? Why have you got an office in London? Why don't you have your main office in Cardiff, for instance? I would say that, because I'm a Cardiff-based politician.

Thank you. So, we have done that evaluation, and that was very much one of the reasons why—. Post COVID, we do have fewer staff in the office all of the time. That's absolutely right. We therefore had some spare office space in London, and so we negotiated with the Local Government Boundary Commission for England to bring their team entirely and basically sublet from us. That was a significant efficiency for us and gain, I think, for all of us, because we work closely with them at times. And that was in order to make best use of our London space, and to allow us, as I said earlier, if we're going to hire people, we'll be able to hire them outside London, because that's where we also have room. We have a significant number of staff—. We closed our regional offices quite a while ago, and so they are now, basically, entirely homeworkers around the country, but they're based very deeply out and working with democratic services units in councils, really around the whole country.

The reason for having the offices in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast is, obviously, the very close working with Governments in those capitals about the legislation. At the moment, we are spending a tremendous amount of work working on the conduct Order for the 2026 Senedd elections, and the same in Scotland, and so the teams there have to have a tremendous amount of understanding of that. It's a whole-commission thing, and actually the technology and the new IT really helps us bind the commission together. But we are still a very dispersed organisation around the whole country.

Okay. Can we have a copy of that paper, the evaluation paper, please?

We haven't got a specific valuation paper on all of them. What we've got is the work we did in order to bring the local government boundary commission in, and I'm sure I can send you the figures and the summary and the analysis—

No, no, I was thinking more about how you streamlined—

Okay, we'll ask the question, Janet, and we'll see what's possible to be provided to the committee in confidence.

Could I also remind you, Janet, that, this year, the core costs have gone down? So, we are doing our bit in trying to manage our day-to-day expenditure.

Okay.

Okay. We have now gone over time, and can I, therefore, thank you for your time today and the evidence? Just to remind you that you will get a copy of the transcript, and if there are any factual inaccuracies, can you please let the clerking team know so we can have them corrected? So, with that, I would like to say 'thank you', and we'll look forward to having further discussions. And just to remind you that we have to lay our report by 22 November.

Okay. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Diolch.

Thank you so much.

And for Members, we now move into item 3, which is a request, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42, to resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting. Are Members content to do so? I see they are, so we'll now move into private.