More than 20,000 reminder letters were sent out telling people to fill out their electoral register form - even though it was before the deadline and some had actually responded.

The numbers were revealed by Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas in the House of Keys last week.

Mr Thomas, who has previously had to defend the government’s decision to outsource electoral register administration to the UK, was asked about the issue by Jason Moorhouse (Arbory, Castletown and Malew).

It comes after a number of residents expressed concern they were sent reminder letters after they had responded.

The actual deadline to respond was yesterday (Monday).

Describing the overall response as ’encouraging’, Mr Thomas said: ’A total of 42,662 household inquiry forms were issued in January as part of the 2019 annual canvass for electoral registration.

’By the close of business on February 8, the electoral registration unit had received 22,414 responses. Details of the non-responding households were sent to the ERS group on February 11 in order to generate the reminder forms. This resulted in a total of 20,248 reminder forms being issued towards the end of February.’

Processing

He said that there was a 10-day process period between the cut off and sending a reminder letter, so ’quite a few people will have received a reminder letter after they had done something in those days’.

The Electoral Reform Services Group was appointed on a 12-month contract to deliver and process the paper-based elements required for the annual update of the electoral register.

Questions were raised last month about data protection implications, particularly after Brexit, but Mr Thomas insisted that the ERS Group and services provider Idox did not share any data with subsidiaries.