Review of Polling Districts, Polling Places and Polling Stations 2025
What are Polling Districts, Polling Places and Polling Stations?
- A polling district is the smallest geographical area of the city used for electoral administration. The whole city is currently split into 122 of these and there are between 4 and 6 polling districts per local government ward.
- A polling place is a building or area that all electors located within a given polling district go to vote. We try to ensure that each polling place is located withing its respective polling district, but this is not always possible.
- A polling station is the building or room within a polling place where voting takes place. Some polling places can have more than one polling station.
What is this review?
This review took into account all the changes to the local government ward boundaries that will take effect for the local government elections in May 2026. These ward boundary changes were finalised by the Local Government Boundary Commission (LGBCE) following a consultation.
The polling district structure we adopted for the register published on 1 December 2025 needed to cater for both the existing current ward structure and also the future new ward structure that will not take effect until May 2026.
It was proposed that 93 of the 122 current polling districts will remain as they are, just with slightly different names/codes/references. The remaining 29 polling districts were each split into either two or three parts because the LGBCE created a future ward boundary that passed through those areas. Therefore those 29 remaining current polling districts were subdivided into 60 future polling districts, so the register published on 1 December 2025 had a total of 153 polling districts in it.
As an example, and to show how were named, the current St Michaels ward polling district P01 has been bisected by the new ward arrangements. Half of that polling district will fall within the future Barnes & Thornhill ward (which will use an A prefix) and the remainder will fall within the future Tunstall & Humbledon ward (that will use a U prefix). They will both lie within the Sunderland Central parliamentary constituency (which will use a lowercase s as a reference). The two new polling districts are called AsP01 and UsP01.
The review was to also ensure that polling stations meet the reasonable needs of voters and that polling places provide suitable accessibility facilities. The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and the Returning Officer (RO) has published his representations, and the review sought feedback and comments on those and any other submissions made, including those from organisations with any expertise in access for persons with any type of disability, were encouraged. All comments and suggestions for changes are published on this page. The deadline for submissions was Tuesday 30 September 2025.
All suggestions received during the consultation were evaluated carefully. A final report was published when the review was complete.
Later Review
The current review will be followed by further, more extensive, review in 2026. This subsequent review will remove all references to the current ward structure, and propose to merge several of the polling districts and change some polling district boundaries to reflect the new wards.
Any comments given during this current review will be considered again at that subsequent review in 2026.
Draft Maps and Comments
The ERO and RO comments for each future polling district/place/station can be found in the downloads section of this page along with maps showing the proposed boundaries. Some wards have more than one map to magnify some areas. An explanation of the proposed naming convention for the proposed polling districts along with an annotated version of one of the maps can be found in the 'Documents relating to the review:' section at the bottom of this page.
How to submit comments or suggestions
You were able to submit comments or suggestions using one of the methods below:
- Web form: Submit a response
- Email: [email protected]
- Post: Electoral Services, Sunderland City Council, City Hall, Plater Way, Sunderland SR1 3AA
Drop-in Sessions
Electoral Services Officers were available to answer questions in person in City Hall on the following dates:
- Monday 15 September 2:00pm until 7:00pm
- Thursday 25 September 12:30pm until 1:30pm
Documents relating to the review:
Notice of Review of Polling Districts 2025 (PDF, 113 KB)(opens new window)
List of Current wards with prefixes (PDF, 40 KB)(opens new window)
List of Future wards with prefixes (PDF, 35 KB)(opens new window)
List of Current Polling Stations and Places - Oct 2025 (PDF, 77 KB)(opens new window)
Explanation of Future Polling District labelling and maps (PDF, 402 KB)(opens new window)
