Up to 10,000 Shropshire residents don’t have voter ID for the next general election and not many are applying to get one

Of these, only 361 people have applied to the government for a voter authority certificate (VAC), a new identity document introduced earlier this year in response to the new legal requirement to produce ID at polling stations.

The figures were revealed at a council meeting on Thursday, in response to a question from a member of the public about the impact of the new rules on democracy in Shropshire.

Last week’s local elections elsewhere in the country, including in Telford & Wrekin, were the first affected by the new ID requirement which was introduced by the Elections Act 2022.

As Shropshire did not have elections this year, the slow take-up suggests county residents have not rushed to order their VACs.

The next election in the county will be the general election, which must be no later than January 2025 but is expected to be called in late 2024.

The question, submitted by Heather Waters, said: “This country has never accepted the need for universal photo ID, which is a document carried at all times by citizens in many neighbouring countries.

“Consequently, a good number of UK citizens do not automatically possess accepted methods of photo ID for this purpose. It falls to local authorities to provide the new ID.”

Ms Waters asked the council how many residents it estimated did not have an accepted form of ID, and how many applications had been made for VACs.

She also asked whether the council would have to front the cost of dealing with VAC applications and issuing the documents, and how much this was expected to be.

Councillor Gwilym Butler, cabinet member for resources, said: “The Electoral Commission (EC) undertook a public opinion tracker of around 5,000 people in February 2022, which allowed them to estimate that around four per cent of people in Britain did not have any of the pre-existing forms of photo ID required to vote.

“Using this four per cent figure against Shropshire’s total electorate would equate to potentially 10,000 individuals not having any of the acceptable forms of photo ID.”

However, Councillor Butler said the council did not expect to have to deal with this volume of applications.

He said: “This figure would be lower if based on election turnout. For example, at the last general election turnout in Shropshire was around 70 per cent so this would mean possibly 7,000 people would need a VAC in order to vote, and at the last local elections in 2021 turnout was, on average, 40 per cent so approximately 4,000 people would need a VAC.”

Councillor Butler said the VAC application portal was provided and certificated issued by the government, though council staff were required to verify each application. So far, 361 applications have been received from people living in the council’s administrative area.

He added that it had “not been possible to ascertain the overall costs associated with this work”, but that the government had promised to reimburse councils for any associated costs.