If you've moved recently and need to change your address on the Electoral Roll — or Electoral Register — the process itself is straightforward. Contact your local authority, or update your registration online (opens external site).
Beyond letting you vote, your Electoral Roll status matters to lenders because it lets them verify your identity during credit checks. So your listing needs to be current, and the credit reference agencies need to be reporting it correctly.
Checking your current status#
Two ways to check:
1. Contact your local Electoral Registration Office. In England, Scotland or Wales you can find your local office (opens external site) by entering your postcode, which returns a phone number or email address. In Northern Ireland, contact the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland (opens external site) instead.
2. Check your credit report. Monitoring it over time keeps you across changes to your status and confirms the agencies hold your information correctly.
Because the three agencies are independent of one another, it's worth checking each is reporting your status accurately. Lenders may run a check with any of them, so incorrect information at just one can hurt an application.
How to register at your new address#
You need to update if you've changed your name, nationality or address.
Online. The quickest route is the gov.uk register to vote service (opens external site). It asks for your National Insurance number — though you can still register without one — along with your name, address, date of birth and nationality.
Via your local authority. Contact your council's Electoral Registration Office directly. Their contact details will be on the council website.
Once complete, your name and address appear on the Electoral Roll.
Can you register at two addresses?#
Sometimes, yes — if you split your time between two homes, own more than one property, or are a student with different home and term-time addresses. Both addresses must be in different council areas.
Registering twice does not give you two votes in UK Parliament elections. You can vote at one address only, though you choose which. Voting more than once in the same parliamentary election is illegal.
You can vote at both addresses in local council elections, provided the councils are different. You'll need to register (opens external site) twice, once at each address.
Anonymous registration#
Anonymous registration (opens external site) lasts only a year, so you'll need to reapply annually — and update it if your name, nationality or address changes in the meantime.
It exists for voters with safety concerns about their name and address appearing on the register. Your details won't appear on the Electoral Roll, and your Electoral Registration Office won't disclose them unless legally required to. That also means it won't show on your credit report, which can affect your credit applications and score.
To apply you'll need to:
- Explain your safety concerns — why your name and address appearing would put you, or someone in your household, at risk
- Provide supporting evidence, such as court documents or an attestation. An attestation is a formal document signed by a qualifying officer, such as a police officer above a certain rank or a registered nurse, certifying that your safety would be at risk
Forms and instructions are on the UK government website (opens external site), or your local Electoral Registration Office can post one to you.
When your update will show#
Agencies get regular updates from local councils, but it's common for a new listing to take up to three months from publication to appear on your credit report.
Timing depends on when you registered, because the year splits into two periods.
The rolling registration period runs January to July. Changes made then are usually published the following month — though registering mid-month or later often pushes publication to the month after next.
The Annual Canvass is the big annual update, starting in July and concluding around December, though some councils finish collecting earlier. Councils post a Household Enquiry Form to every property, then process, audit and update their records from the responses. It takes a while, so the updated register isn't usually published until December. The agencies then update their own systems, which can take a month or more given the volume — meaning your credit report may not reflect the change until January.
Importantly, while the Annual Canvass is running, the agencies don't accept requests to manually update this information.
Raising a dispute#
Outside the Annual Canvass, if more than a month has passed since your new status was published and your report still hasn't caught up, you can raise a dispute and ask an agency to update manually.
You'll need an official letter of confirmation from your local council. Most UK councils provide this as standard, free of charge. It needs to state the date your listing was published and the exact name and address format it's registered under.
With that letter you can raise a dispute with each agency individually, provided more than a month has passed since publication. Send each of them a scanned copy.
One thing to note: credit reports don't hold Electoral Roll information that's scheduled to go live. They only reflect what's already been published and shared with the agencies.
What the Electoral Roll is used for#
- Verifying voting eligibility for national and local elections and referendums.
- Jury selection. Names are drawn at random from the register.
- Credit checks and identity verification. Credit card companies, lenders — mortgage lenders especially — employers and others use your status to verify you at your current address, matching the name and address on your application against your listing. This is genuinely important for your credit health.
If your information is wrong or out of date, lenders may ask for further proof of identity, delaying your application, or reject it outright. Making sure all three agencies hold the correct details is what prevents that.
Why address format matters#
Location accuracy isn't the whole story — format counts too.
Your report lists previous addresses you've been financially connected to, not just your current one. Lenders usually collect one current and one or more previous addresses during an application, and the agencies use those to return the linked credit information.
The process stalls if the addresses on your application appear in a different format to those held on your Electoral Roll listing and your credit accounts. Mismatched formats can return an incomplete credit file, or nothing at all — leading to a decline or extra verification steps.
The differences can be tiny. "Flat" instead of "apartment". A flat listed as Flat 2, 15 on the Electoral Roll but 15/2 elsewhere. Both formats may be perfectly valid, but consistency everywhere is what makes your report return all your data.
The key things to remember#
- Update whenever your name, nationality or address changes.
- Register online at gov.uk or through your local council.
- Changes take up to three months to appear on your credit report.
- Rolling registration runs January to July; the Annual Canvass runs July to December.
- No manual updates are accepted while the Annual Canvass is running.
- After a month, you can dispute with a council confirmation letter.
- Anonymous registration keeps you off your credit report, which affects applications.
- Keep your address in a consistent format across the register and every account.