Get Involved
A plan needs people. Here is exactly which people, and what each of them would actually do.
Build is a worked programme with a website, written by one person. It is not yet a party, and pretending otherwise would be the first broken promise. To become one — to put a name on a ballot paper anywhere in the UK — a specific set of jobs has to be filled by named, real, willing people, and some of them carry legal responsibility.
One of them is already spoken for: Marty wrote the programme and would stand as Leader. Everything else on this page is open, and deliberately so — a party where one person holds every office is the thing this project was started to argue against.
This page lists them honestly: what the law requires, what the work looks like, and roughly how much of your life it would take.
Build is not a registered party, and 1 of these 18 roles has a name against it: Leader — Marty. Nobody is employed, no money is being collected, and there is no membership to join. This page is a specification, not a recruitment drive — published early so that the shape of the thing can be argued with before it exists.
The roles the law requires
Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, a party cannot register with the Electoral Commission — and therefore cannot put its name or emblem on a ballot paper — without the first three. The fourth is an optional registered office, and worth filling anyway.
Leader
Required to register
The registered public face of the party. Named on the register, accountable for it, and the person the press comes to first. One person may hold more than one registered office, but concentrating all of them in one pair of hands is exactly the failure mode this project exists to argue against — which is why every other role on this page is open.
Held by Marty
Time A second full-time job
Nominating Officer
Required to register
Signs off every candidate who stands under the party name, and controls use of the name and emblem on ballot papers. The gatekeeper: nobody appears on a ballot as Build without this person's signature.
Time Heavy in election periods, light between
Treasurer
Required to register
Legally responsible for the party's finances and for every report to the Electoral Commission — donations, loans, quarterly and annual accounts. Personally liable for compliance failures. Wants somebody who likes a spreadsheet and dislikes surprises.
Time Steady, and unforgiving of deadlines
Campaigns Officer
Optional registered office
Can be registered to take responsibility for referendum and campaign spending, splitting that load off the Treasurer. Worth filling before it is needed rather than during.
Time Light until a campaign starts
Registration also needs two documents the Commission has to approve: a constitution setting out how the party makes decisions, and a financial scheme setting out how money is controlled. Both have to exist on paper before anything else on this page matters.
The roles that make it work
None of these are legally required. All of them are the difference between a registered party and a functioning one.
Secretary
Core
Keeps the record: meetings, minutes, decisions, the constitution, who agreed what and when. The unglamorous job that decides whether the transparency promises are provable a year later.
Time A few hours a week
Campaign Co-ordinator
Core
Turns a plan into doorsteps. Targets seats, schedules canvassing, allocates volunteers and literature, keeps the ground operation moving in an actual election timetable.
Time All-consuming during a campaign
Vetting Officer
Core
Checks candidates before they are approved, not after they embarrass everybody. Declarations of interest, financial history, employment record, public statements, safeguarding. Needs judgement and a strong stomach.
Time Intense in bursts
Compliance & Data Protection Lead
Core
Keeps the party inside election law and data protection law: imprints on literature, spending returns, the membership database, subject access requests, retention. The role that stops a good campaign being undone by paperwork.
Time Steady
Membership Secretary
Core
Records who has joined, what they have paid, and what they have consented to. Feeds the Treasurer and the Compliance Lead.
Time Grows with the party
Communications Lead
Core
Press, statements, interviews, the messaging discipline that stops eight people saying nine things. Answers the phone when a journalist rings at 6pm.
Time Unpredictable by nature
Digital Lead
Core
The website, the dashboard, the data pipelines, the security of all three. Build's whole argument is that a party should publish more than it is asked to; somebody has to run the thing that does the publishing.
Time Ongoing
Volunteer Co-ordinator
Core
Makes sure people who offer help are given something to do within a week rather than a month. The single biggest cause of losing volunteers is silence.
Time A few hours a week
The roles a real campaign needs
Filled per area and per election rather than once.
Election Agent
Per candidate, legally required
Every candidate at a UK election must have an agent, who is legally responsible for that campaign's spending return. Get this wrong and the candidate can be disqualified. A serious, bounded, unavoidable job.
Time Full-on for the regulated period
Constituency Organiser
Per area
Builds the local branch: members, meetings, canvassing teams, local issues. The person who actually knows the ward.
Time Ongoing, local
Policy Lead
Per area of policy
Owns one part of the programme — housing, energy, care, defence — keeps the costings current and defends them in public when challenged.
Time Deep rather than wide
Fundraising Lead
Core once registered
Raises money inside the rules on permissible donors, and keeps the record that lets every penny be published. Works hand in glove with the Treasurer.
Time Ongoing
Safeguarding Lead
Core
Policy and practice for protecting members, volunteers and the public — especially where the party works with young people or vulnerable adults.
Time Light until it isn't
Accessibility Lead
Core
Makes sure meetings, materials and the website work for disabled members and voters. Given what the programme promises on disability, this cannot be an afterthought.
Time Ongoing
What signing up would actually commit you to
Every one of these roles is bound by the Contract with Voters — the transparency promises in it apply to the people running the party, not just to candidates. In practice that means:
- Your declarable interests get published. Before you take a role, not after.
- Money is public. Every donation the party accepts appears on the dashboard, and separately on the Electoral Commission’s register, which this site already publishes and searches for every other party.
- Decisions are minuted and published. If it cannot be shown, it should not be done.
- You can be argued with in public. The Challenge page applies to the people running Build as much as to the plan.
If that sounds like more scrutiny than other parties ask of their officers — yes. That is the entire proposition.
How to put your name forward
There is nothing to join yet, no membership fee, and no database with your name in it. What there is: a note that reaches Marty directly, saying which role you could do and why. The Leader’s job is not on the list below, for obvious reasons.
This goes to one inbox and nowhere else. No list, no newsletter, no database.
Nothing here is a job offer, and nobody is being asked to commit to anything. This is a list of what would need to exist, published in the same spirit as everything else on this site: if the plan cannot survive being looked at closely, it is not a plan.
Requirements above are drawn from the Electoral Commission’s guidance for registering a political party and from election law as it stands. If you know this area professionally and something here is wrong or out of date, say so — that is exactly the kind of correction this site wants.