Returning Officer receives Royal instruction to run election

Photo Caption – Returning Officer for the Highlands, Steve Barron, Chief Executive of The Highland Council, is pictured having the writs hand delivered to him by Royal Mail representative Lee Davenport.

Issued on behalf of the Returning Officer, Highland

The official process to elect Members of Parliament to represent the three UK Highland constituencies has begun.  

This morning Chief Executive of The Highland Council Steve Barron, the Returning Officer for the 2015 UK Parliamentary elections, was hand delivered three writs, sent from the Queen, instructing him to conduct an election for the Highland UK Parliamentary constituencies.  

The writs, which were delivered to council headquarters in Inverness by Lee Davenport on behalf of the Post Master, come from the Crown Office in the Palace of Westminster and state that as parliament has now dissolved, the Returning Officer should conduct elections to appoint a member of parliament to represent the constituencies of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; Ross, Skye and Lochaber; and Inverness, Nairn and Badenoch and Strathspey. 

Nominations for candidates close at 4pm on Thursday 9 April and voting will take place from 7am to 10pm on Thursday 7 May.  Votes for all three Highland constituencies will be counted from 10pm onward on 7 May at the Highland Football Academy in Dingwall.