There was great disappointment amongst Liberal Youth members earlier this month as they were told that they were too late to notify LDHQ of their voting reps for Federal Conference. The organisation has a number of voting places allocated to it as young people often find it difficult to get elected to the role by a local party as they are more likely to move home or to be away studying half the year.

They had not been aware of the original deadline and over the past few days have made their case to LDHQ and the Federal Conference Committee. Some local parties also missed out because they hadn’t realised there was a rush.

This afternoon, Party President Sal Brinton announced that the deadline would be extended until Monday 7th September at midday.

She said:

Over the last few days it has become clear that some local parties have missed the deadlines for notifying Member Services of substitutions for Conference Reps. We did send out two reminders to local parties in May and June to remind them, but not all parties responded.

Can I start by saying the deadline was not a staff decision, they have been carrying out the instructions set by party committees. The deadline timetables are set well in advance of conference by party committees, and whilst we were in Coalition, FCC was forced to set a July deadline to ensure that we complied with security requirements. Now that we are no longer in coalition, we do have more flexibility and I have spent some time over the last couple of days working with our staff at HQ to see how we can help relax this deadline.

I am pleased to say that we can extend the deadline for the notification of subs and extra reps to Monday 7 September at midday. Below are the guidance notes for local parties and conference attendees – please read these carefully. Then if you do wish to notify HQ of any changes to voting reps please do so using the form at www.libdems.org.uk/contact.

Whilst it may be possible for very late substitutions to be presented at conference, it is likely that there will be a delay in processing these. Also if the authority from a local party cannot be verified, then substitution or extra voting representation cannot take place, so again, to reduce the risk of problems, please submit by the 7 September deadline. Also please note that it is not possible to substitute voting reps who have already registered for conference.

Assuming that the party votes for the constitutional changes at conference for one member one vote, this will be the last conference at which we will need to go through the substitution process.

I have also agreed the same arrangements for Liberal Youth voting representatives.

I particularly want to thank the staff in Member Services and Conference Office who have been extremely helpful in offering to make this new deadline work. On behalf of the party, I am very grateful.

The Federal Conference Committee could have ignored all the pleas and decided that rules were rules and that was the end of it. It’s good to see that they have come up with a solution that reflects the situation we are now in, not the one that we were in when the rules were drawn up.

This may well be the last year that we have to go through this voting reps bureaucracy which takes an awful lot of administration. If Conference accepts the amendments on One Member One Vote, all party members could be voting next Autumn.

In the meantime, why not get in touch with your local party to see if they have any spare voting rep places, especially if you are a new member.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social