Preparing for Selections
Information for local parties on what to do to select your next PPC
Selecting a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate is a major opportunity for the Liberal Democrats to build a great head of steam going into the next General Election campaign. Open selections have now re-started and you can go ahead when you are ready.
What’s the Process?
Your local party executive(s) covering a parliamentary constituency should vote to commence the PPC selection for the constituency, and inform your Regional Candidates' Chair (in England) or your State Candidates’ Chair (in Scotland and Wales), who will appoint an independent Returning Officer to oversee the selection. Contact details for all Regional and State Candidate Chairs can be found here. An advert will be placed on the Federal Party website here, to which anyone on the Party’s list of Approved Candidates can apply, candidates are encouraged to meet up with local party members and will be invited to at least one online hustings, and finally members in the local party will vote online to choose their PPC. The whole process usually takes at least two months.
If your local party/parties have not initiated the selection process by July 2027, then your Regional Candidates Chair (in England) is empowered to do so instead.
Before a selection can begin
Firstly, you should think about when you would like to have your PPC in place. The earlier this is, the more time there is for name recognition, campaigning and fundraising. Please let your Regional or State Candidates Chair know in good time, so that our volunteer resources to oversee selections can be shared effectively.
All applicants will have to be on our Party’s list of Approved Candidates at the time when the advert closes, so if you have any aspiring candidates who are not, then please ensure they apply to join as soon as possible. Details on this can be found here.
In every selection, you will need to appoint individual(s) to be the contact person(s) to liaise with the Returning Officer. If you are a target seat, or expect to attract a lot of applicants, you will also need to form a shortlisting committee to decide the final list of candidates for members to choose from. This committee (normally around 5 members) draws up the minimum selection criteria, checks all applications received, interviews applicants and sets any other appropriate tests before drawing up the shortlist of candidates who can campaign for selection. Special training is provided. Your Returning Officer will guide you through this but you may wish to identify members now.
More information
You can find the full selection rules here. You can find the Returning Officers' Notes for Guidance on this page here.
Volunteering to help other local parties
Our PPC selection processes rely heavily on volunteers to act as Returning Officers, E-Ballot Administrators and Candidate Assessors, and to join Regional Candidates Committees. If you might be interested in becoming one of these, or know someone else who might, then there is more information here (this page currently just talks about RO’s but is about to be expanded). Members may not volunteer to help in selections where they live, but they can help in other parts of England, Scotland and Wales!