UK trade union electronic balloting: what the 2026 reform actually says

The background

Until very recently, UK trade unions were legally required to conduct statutory ballots by post. That changed with the Employment Rights Act 2025, which received royal assent in December 2025. The Act amended the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, giving the Secretary of State the power to authorise additional voting methods — provided postal voting remains available as an option.

The implementing legislation — the Trade Unions (Permissible Means of Voting) and Employment Rights (Unfair Dismissal) (Amendment) Order 2026 — was laid before Parliament on 22 June 2026, alongside a revised draft Code of Practice on Electronic and Workplace Balloting. The Code is expected to come into force around August 2026, subject to parliamentary approval.

What's now permitted

The Order authorises three new ballot types:

• Pure electronic balloting — for industrial action ballots, political fund and political resolution ballots, union election and rule change ballots, and union merger ballots
• Hybrid electronic balloting — postal pack sent to members, with the option to return the ballot electronically
• Workplace balloting for industrial action ballots — voting at designated workplace locations, subject to employer agreement

Postal remains the default and fallback in all cases.

The security requirements that matter

The Code of Practice includes several requirements directly relevant to any voting system:

The "responsible person" must actively assess security. The union official or scrutineer responsible for the ballot must assess the security of the proposed voting method before use. This isn't a checkbox — it's a documented requirement that creates real accountability.

Personal (not workplace) email or SMS for ballot access. The Code requires that access to the electronic ballot goes to a personal contact channel, not a workplace one. The rationale is clear: in conventional link-based systems, an employer-visible delivery channel could let them see who received a ballot and when.

An independent scrutineer remains legally required for every statutory ballot, regardless of method.

How Voter.Care's design relates to this

Votercare Max is designed to meet the Code's intent in a stronger way than its literal named mechanism.

The Code's personal email/SMS requirement was written for conventional link-based systems where the ballot access link is the authentication mechanism. Voter.Care's credential model is different: the credential is issued once, in person or via supervised remote proofing, directly to the member. There is no ballot access link or code delivered via any communications channel at all.

The result is that there is no email or SMS that an employer could intercept to determine who received a ballot — because no such message exists. The system meets the Code's underlying goal (preventing employer visibility or interference) more directly than the Code's literal mechanism does.

This distinction needs to be made explicit when engaging with unions, scrutineers, or regulators, not assumed to be self-evident.

The market opportunity

The Code's "responsible person must assess security" requirement is, from our perspective, the most interesting line in the whole document. It creates a natural opening for a system that can actually show its work — documented controls, sourced claims, independently auditable code — rather than one that just asserts compliance.

We'll be tracking the final Code wording once it's approved, and will publish our formal compliance analysis here.

If you're a trade union official or scrutineer interested in discussing Votercare Max and the Code requirements, get in touch.