The Scottish Local Government Elections Amendment Order 2026 was made on 2 September 2026, laid before the Scottish Parliament on 4 September, and is due to come into force on 13 November 2026. The instrument states that Scottish Ministers acted under powers in the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 and consulted the Electoral Commission before making the Order. The commencement date does not mean the changes apply immediately to every contest. Article 1(2) states that the Order has no effect for any election with a polling day on or before 5 May 2027, so the practical effect is aimed at later Scottish local government polls rather than elections already falling within that period.
One of the more technical amendments concerns nomination paperwork. The legislation inserts a new rule requiring some candidates to include a correspondence address within Scotland on the home address form. That duty applies where a candidate has chosen not to make and sign the statement for publication of a home address, or where the candidate has made the statement but the home address is not in Scotland. The explanatory note states that the Scottish correspondence address will be used and published only if the candidate becomes their own election agent by default. For candidates and election administrators, the change closes a procedural gap where an address is withheld from publication or is based outwith Scotland, while preserving the existing option not to publish a home address.
The Order also standardises how candidate names must appear on ballot papers. Under the amended rule 14, each candidate's surname must appear first, followed by the forename, with the two separated by a comma. This is a narrow drafting change, but it has administrative value. Returning officers and print suppliers are being given a single format for ballot design, which should reduce variation between areas and make candidate presentation more consistent across Scotland's local government elections.
On poll cards, the amended rule 24 gives returning officers clearer discretion to add material beyond the content set out in the prescribed forms. The legislation says that official poll cards, official postal poll cards, and equivalent cards issued to proxies may include additional information, provided that it does not relate to any candidate or registered party. The same provision allows different information to be provided to different electors, or to different descriptions of elector. In administrative terms, that creates a clearer legal basis for tailored messages about local voting arrangements or practical assistance, without altering the rule that poll cards must not be used for campaign content.
The most substantial change is at polling stations. The existing requirement to provide a specified device for blind and partially sighted voters is replaced with a broader duty to provide such equipment as it is reasonable to provide for the purpose of enabling, or making it easier for, relevant persons to vote independently in the manner required by rule 33, including in relation to voting secretly. The new definition of relevant persons covers people who find it difficult or impossible to vote in that way because of blindness, partial sight, or another disability. The effect is to move the law away from a single prescribed device and towards a wider accessibility duty based on the practical needs of disabled voters.
The Order also puts a guidance framework around that duty. It requires the Electoral Commission to issue guidance to returning officers, to consult appropriate persons before doing so, including bodies representing the interests of relevant persons, and it requires returning officers to have regard to that guidance when deciding what equipment is reasonable to provide. A transitional provision is included so that guidance already prepared for Scottish Parliament elections can count for these purposes if it was issued and consulted on under the corresponding 2015 rules. That should reduce duplication and means electoral administrators may be able to draw on an existing accessibility framework rather than starting afresh.
Finally, the schedule replaces Form 2, the nomination paper, and Form 4, the ballot paper, in Part VII of the 2011 Order. The explanatory note states that Form 2 is updated in consequence of changes to local government candidacy rights made by the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025, while Form 4 is updated to reflect the standard presentation of candidate names on ballot papers. Taken together, the amendments are administrative rather than political, but they will change routine election administration. Candidates will need to check nomination paperwork more carefully, returning officers will have broader discretion over elector communications, and electoral teams will be under a clearer statutory duty to plan for independent voting by disabled people.