help me

[anto1985]

hey there i'm pretty new to the answerbank

does anyone one of a truly free ELECTORAL ROLL for England???

[Buenchico]

(2-part post):

Firstly, there are two versions of the electoral roll. The full version lists all adults who're eligible to vote in UK elections and who've complied with their legal obligation to enter their details on the electoral roll. This version of the electoral roll is only available, in electronic form, to official bodies such as the police and credit reference agencies. Anyone who uses, or passes on, the data from the electronic version of the full electoral roll, other than for for the approved 'official' purposes, faces a jail sentence under the Data Protection Act.

The only way that 'the man in the street' can consult the full electoral roll is to view the paper version at the local council office (or public library) serving the area which that part of the roll covers. It's compiled in street order, not by name, so you can't search for 'Fred Bloggs' other than by looking through the listings for every street.

[Buenchico]

The other version of the electoral roll is the 'edited' one. This may be sold (for a very large amount of money) to anyone who wants a copy, such as mailing organisations or firms like 192.com. However, when people register for the electoral roll, they're invited to mark the box which excludes their details from the edited roll. The majority of people probably choose to do this (in order to cut down on junk mail), so the edited roll probably includes well under a half of all the adults in the country.

So, however you view the electoral roll in electronic form, there's no certainty that you'll find the person you're looking for. Also, because firms like 192.com pay extremely large amounts of money to purchase the rights to use the edited roll, you'll never find a genuinely free search service online. However, the firm behind 192.com also sell the edited roll on CD-Rom. Many public libraries purchase these CDs and you can use them, free of charge, to search the full national edited roll in the library.

Head down to your local library and you might find what you want. However, if you're unfortunate enough to live in Camden, none of the libraries will have the CDs because they (wrongly) state that allowing you to use them breaches the Data Protection Act.

Chris

[anto1985]

Hey Chris thanks 4 1 nice 1!!!