The Scottish Ministers have laid a narrow correction to the absent voting rules for Scottish local government elections. According to the legislation.gov.uk text, the Representation of the People (Absent Voting at Local Government Elections) (Scotland) Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 2026 were made on 16 September 2026, laid before the Scottish Parliament on 18 September 2026 and are due to come into force on 13 November 2026. This is explicitly a defect-correction instrument. The preamble states that it has been made because of a defect in S.S.I. 2026/251 and is being issued free of charge to all known recipients of that earlier instrument. In policy terms, the measure does not open a new class of absent voter by itself; it corrects the way an earlier amendment was fitted into the 2007 regulations.
The earlier instrument, S.S.I. 2026/251, amended regulation 10 of the 2007 regulations so that a person may apply for a proxy vote for a particular election when they cannot reasonably be expected to vote in person because they will be accompanying another person while that person receives medical care or treatment on polling day. The official explanatory note to the new instrument says S.S.I. 2026/251 also set the additional information required for that application. What S.S.I. 2026/251 did not do was complete the matching deadline provision in regulation 11. That left a technical gap: the ground for applying existed, but the closing date for that specific type of late application needed to be stated separately in the closing-date regulation.
S.S.I. 2026/263 fills that gap by inserting a new paragraph into regulation 11(4) of the 2007 regulations. The inserted text covers applications made on the grounds in regulation 10(5G) where the applicant only became aware of those grounds after 5 p.m. on the sixth day before the poll. The explanatory note then states the practical effect in plain terms. For this category of application, the closing date becomes 5 p.m. on the date of the poll. In operational terms, that gives electoral administrators a clear legal basis to accept a same-day proxy application where a voter is unexpectedly required to accompany another person for medical care or treatment.
The commencement date and the operative date are not the same. The regulations come into force on 13 November 2026, but regulation 1(2) provides that they have no effect for any election where polling day is on or before 5 May 2027. That matters for election planning. Electoral Registration Officers and Returning Officers can prepare forms, guidance and staff instructions from November 2026, but the new deadline rule is not to be used for polls held on or before 5 May 2027. The instrument therefore creates legal certainty in advance of the next set of Scottish local electoral events to which the amended absent voting rules will apply.
For voters, the change is tightly drawn. It applies only to a proxy vote application for a particular election and only where the reason for not attending the polling station is that the applicant will be accompanying another person for medical care or treatment. It is not a wider rewrite of the absent voting system. For administrators, however, the correction is important. Deadline provisions in election law need to be explicit because they determine whether an application can lawfully be processed. By adding the missing closing-date rule, the Scottish Ministers reduce the risk of inconsistent handling across council areas and limit scope for dispute on polling day.
The instrument was made under sections 33 and 61(2) of the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Act 2006 and was signed by Jamie Hepburn on behalf of the Scottish Ministers at St Andrew’s House on 16 September 2026. That legal basis is narrower than the earlier September instrument because this measure is about timing and procedural alignment rather than a broader policy restatement. Taken together, S.S.I. 2026/251 and S.S.I. 2026/263 now form a complete set of rules for this new type of absent vote application. The first created the medical companion route and set what information must accompany the application; the second supplies the missing deadline. The result is a more workable rule for absent voting at Scottish local government elections, with the main effect falling on electoral administration rather than on the franchise itself.