Renewing your postal vote

If your postal vote arrangements were put in place before Tuesday 31 October 2023, your postal vote will expire on Saturday 31 January 2026.

Renew your postal vote

Following changes introduced by the Elections Act 2022, postal voters are now required to reapply for their postal vote every three years.

If you applied for a postal vote before Tuesday 31 October 2023, your postal vote will expire on Saturday 31 January 2026. If a new application is not received by this date, we are required, by law, to cancel your postal vote, and you will have to vote in a polling station until a new postal vote application is received or if a proxy is appointed.

Therefore, if you would like to continue to vote by post, you must renew your postal voting arrangement by making a new postal vote application. Please note you do not need to make another application to be added onto the Electoral register unless you have moved house.

Renew online

You can renew your Postal Vote online.

You can renew your postal vote for either:

• a single election on a specific date.
• a specific period.
• the maximum period (three years).

Other ways to renew

You can also renew by completing a paper form for a postal vote.

Paper application forms can be sent to us by:

• email at: absent.vote@rbwm.gov.uk   (please note that the application must be attached to the email in a word, pdf, tif or jpeg format).
• post to: Electoral Services, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Town Hall, St Ives Road, Maidenhead SL6 1RF.

All postal vote applications must contain the:

• applicant's full name,
• the address where you are registered to vote,
• date of birth,
• national insurance number; and
• signature.

Once an application to vote by post is submitted, the applicant's identity is verified against records held by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

If we require any further information, we will contact you using the contact information you provided on your application.

Once your application has been successfully processed, we will contact you to confirm this.

How we will contact you

If you have provided us with an email address, we will contact you to confirm that you must reapply online. We may send up to three emails but will not be sending out paper forms.

So that you can spot a genuine email from us, the email:

title will be 'Postal Vote Reapplication'

it will be sent via the Governments Secure NOTIFY system and come from Electoral Registration - RB Windsor and Maidenhead <electoral.registration.rb.windsor.and.maidenhead@notifications.service.gov.uk>

If we do not hold an email for you or the email bounces back we will send out paper forms from early December 2025 inviting you to renew by Saturday 31 January 2026. We will only send out one communication and will not be sending any reminders.

Some members of the same household may be contacted in different ways depending on whether we have an email address or not.

We are using emails where a voter has provided an email address to reduce our carbon footprint and we are not reimbursed for sending out paper forms to those with email addresses.

Please help us by responding as soon as possible.

How to cancel your postal vote

If you want to cancel your postal vote then there is no need to respond to this request to renew and your postal vote will automatically be cancelled on Saturday 31 January 2026.