The director of Go Supply Chain has been looking into the costs and impacts of the snap general election. It is thought that the overall cost of the General Election that will take place in June this year will be in the region of £140-170 million, with planning in place to count more than 30 million votes, as there were in 2015.
Go Supply Chain is a company that works in order to deliver logistics consultancy and supply chain services to clients in retail, FCMG, fashion, automotive and technology industries. For a general election, there is a lot of organisation and planning that has to go into making sure that everything is ready before the vote. In order to allow people to vote, polling stations need to be chosen in places that are easily accessible, then the procedures that is required for postal votes needs to be carried out. When the snap election was announced by the Prime Minister on the 18th April 2017, all of the preparation and organisation that usually takes place needed to be sped up. The original planning an preparation was working towards the general election that was set to take place on the 7th May 2020 according to the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011. The announcement of the Snap election meant that there was just 7 weeks to make sure that all of the logistics and planning was carried out.
The political parties also have their own logistical challenges because of the announcement, as all other plans for a long campaign had to be altered and the parties have had to create and carry out a much shorter campaign with the tighter budgets that come with that. According to the research carried out on the 2015 election, there UK political parties have campaign funds that are in the millions in order to give themselves the best chance of winning seats. In a breakdown of approximate values, parties have £15.2 million for unsolicited material to be sent to the electorate, £7.7 million for market research and canvassing, £6,9 million on advertising and £2.8 million for general overhead costs and admin. This is without considering the cost of transport, organising and carrying out rallies, manifesto materials, broadcasts or other media costs.
