Adare All Set To Deliver To Three Million Voters

With six months to go the UK's next local elections Adare's Democratic Services team is gearing up to deliver election products to over three million voters across the country.

The company's credentials as an industry leader in handling time critical documents and maintaining 100 per cent data integrity have been key to securing the confidence of local authorities to deliver an infallible result within strict deadlines.

Covering polling cards, ballot papers, ballot books and postal voting packs, the Democratic Services team has developed an innovative one-piece mailer with an integral envelope to optimise manufacturing for reduced costs and with rapid production turnaround times.

The mailer complies with multiple legislative and security requirements from bodies such as the Ministry of Justice, the Association of Electoral Administrators and political parties.

While commentators and politicians speculated last month about the possibility of an early general election Adare was also poised to deliver materials to the same volume of voters - within a deadline of just 17 days following the dissolution of parliament to complete the project.

"The key thing is we're prepared for all types of elections, all year round.

This includes Parliamentary, Council, European, regional, GLA, Mayoral and Parish elections.

It's all about planning, control and integrity," explains Angus Walker, business development director for Adare's Democratic Services team.

"The same principles apply to shareholder and trade union voting programmes - whenever time-critical democratic postal solutions are required, Adare is ready to deliver".

The Democratic Services team regularly runs by-elections for councils, allowing continual improvement and testing of processes and solutions.

As consultants, the team can understand and translate the complex legislation required to manufacture products for elections.

Richard Besley, Elections and Electoral Registration Team Manager for Selby Council and Branch Secretary of the Association of Electoral Administrators for the North East and Yorkshire says; "Selby Council has worked with the Adare Democratic Services team for a number of years and their solution has proved very reliable and suits the requirements of the time critical nature of the election timetable.

Importantly, Adare continually engages with Selby to improve the solution and make it suit new legislative requirements or manufacturing opportunities".

Alistair Cane, executive director of strategic solutions at Adare, comments: "Developing an offering for such a challenging and time sensitive process requires highly developed project management tools, to ensure we can deliver on every aspect of a project at a moment's notice.

"The data integrity and personalisation necessary is akin to the highly sensitive documents we handle on behalf of financial clients, while the volume and time pressures are more commonly seen in large direct mail campaigns".

Distributing polling cards and postal votes is further complicated by the possibility of last minute changes to those entitled to vote and delivery addresses.

Furthermore, up to 10 days before polling day candidates can withdraw and voters can request postal votes - reducing the time available to deliver vital documents.

Vitally, every part of these end-to-end solutions is manufactured inhouse - giving councils confidence that they have a direct relationship with one company.

Adare's project management system, Prince 2, facilitates a highly structured, methodical approach adhering to strict government frameworks.

All work is carried out at Adare's Park Mill multimedia customer communications centre, which holds the ISO 27001 and APACS 55 accreditations for security, awarded to firms demonstrating high levels of system, data and process integrity.

Further investment is planned to expand the site to deal with growing demand for Adare's Democratic Services.

Cane concludes: "Our experienced team works extremely closely with each council to ensure we understand their precise needs - postal voting is one of the highest profile 'mailings' in our industry and one where historically a number of printers have caught a fairly nasty cold.

Our focus on product innovation and design, data security and end-to-end production integrity created such demand for our solution when it looked like a general election was imminent that that we actually had to turn several councils away - a problem most organisations only dream of.

We are already preparing to deliver to three million voters for the May 2008 local elections, and we expect to significantly increase that amount as we expand our capacity at Park Mill over the next 12 months.".

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