The Scottish and British governments have missed a deadline to agree a statement about what happens after the independence referendum.
The Electoral Commission asked both administrations to reach a shared position by today.
John McCormick, Electoral Commissioner for Scotland, said: "During our assessment of the question we found that people wanted impartial information about the referendum before they voted, so we asked both governments to agree a joint position on the process that will follow the referendum.
"We asked for this to be agreed by December 20 to coincide with the expected timing of Royal Assent of the Referendum Bill so that all the rules about how the referendum is conducted, and what happens afterwards, are clear at the same time.
"Now that we have Royal Assent we would like this clarity to be provided as soon as possible and we understand from both governments that progress is being made. In the interests of voters, we would ask that every effort is made to reach agreement early in the new year."
The referendum is on September 18 next year. The question will be: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"
First Minister Alex Salmond said some progress is being made between governments.
"But the central difficulty here is quite simple," he told BBC Radio Scotland.
"The only institution of state which has been prepared to have technical discussions with the Scottish Government in terms of proposals for a Yes vote or the aftermath of a Yes vote is the Bank of England where Mervyn King authorised his officials to have these technical discussions because, of course, the Bank of England is independent from the Westminster Government and, therefore, he could do that.
"But no other government department in London is prepared to even have technical discussions up until now. I hope they revise that opinion because obviously what the Electoral Commission was seeking, not in terms of pre-negotiation, but certainly technical discussions would be of great benefit in giving people some outline of the immediate implications of the negotiations that will follow a Yes vote next year."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article