General election 2019: Record number of people registered to vote

More than 120,000 extra people in Scotland have registered to vote in the general election, new figures show.

The final tally for eligible voters was 4,053,140, up 3% from the same time last year, according to the Scottish Assessors Association (SAA).

The figure is the highest number of people in Scotland registered to vote in a UK parliament election in decades.

Of the people registered to vote on 12 December, 728,148 have opted to do so by post.

Electoral registration officers said they have had an "extremely busy few weeks".

Pete Wildman, secretary of the SAA, which helps co-ordinate electoral registration services across the country, said: "We are pleased to see an increase in the number of people registered to vote.

"All our teams have worked hard to process the increased number of applications ahead of the final update of the register."

SAA figures show there were 3,960,093 validated voters on the register by 14 November.

The final deadline to sign up to vote was 26 November and the latest update of the register shows 4,053,140 people have now signed up to vote.

This is up from the last official tally of Scottish voters, in December last year, when 3,925,820 people were on the register.

National Records of Scotland publishes annual counts of voters and its available records go back to 1996.

The latest count is the highest for a general election since that year, with the previous highest in March 2015 when 4,035,394 were signed up.