Social media

Our social media channels will feature a variety of information from our services and partners, keeping you informed and up to date with what is happening across the district.

We love hearing from you across the social media platforms we use. We're also here to help in any way that we can, but we expect users to offer us the same level of courtesy that we offer them. We want our social media channels to be safe, positive and informative spaces and a place for healthy, open and insightful discussion, which is why we have a short set of house rules for being part of our online community: 

• All users must comply with the social media platform's Terms of Use as well as our own terms of use.
• We will remove, in whole or in part, posts that we feel are inappropriate, or discriminatory against any individual or group.
• You are wholly responsible for any content you post including content that you choose to share.
• We will remove messages and/or disable comments (where function allows) including reporting and/or blocking users on our social media channels who post messages at us which we believe are:
  • Abusive, obscene, threatening, defamatory, harmful, racially offensive or contain swearing.
  • Deceptive or misleading
  • In violation of any intellectual property rights, including copyright
  • In violation of any law or regulation
  • Repetitive content
  • Spam and off-topic content (persistent negative and/or abusive posts in which the aim is to provoke a response)
  • Promotional material, including links to external websites, promotions of an individual’s service, requests for donations, or publicising your own or someone else’s personal information
  • Corrupt or illegal content.
  • Impersonating someone else.

Anyone repeatedly engaging with us using content or language which falls into the above categories will be blocked and/or reported to the associated social media platform. We will not tolerate or respond to abusive messages.

We must remain politically neutral at all times on social media which is why council officers are unable to reply to, endorse or engage with, any content that is of a party political nature. We will remove any comments on our page that, we think compromise our political neutrality. If you wish to discuss political issues, please contact your local councillor. 

Endorsement

We do not implicitly or explicitly endorse any individual or organisation just by creating a social media connection. This is regardless of the terms used by social media providers such as follow or like.

We will maintain social media connections with organisations that are critical of us or have opposing views. We do not hold any responsibility for the content of such profiles.

Removal

Once we have made a connection, we will only remove a profile from our network if unless there is an over-riding reason. This could be because:

• the connection poses a significant and material risk to our reputation and credibility
• there is a significant and material breach of our obligations to maintain political neutrality

We cannot be prescriptive on what would pose such a threat and will consider each case on its own merits.

Contacting us via social media

We’ll do our best to respond to your enquiries within one working day, but in most cases it will be within a few hours.

Our working hours are 9am-5pm Monday to Friday. We’ll deal with enquiries sent outside of this time as soon as possible when working hours resume.

We’ll try to help you, or direct you to people and/or departments who can, wherever possible.

Please remember to be kind – our members of staff are human too. Anyone who is repeatedly rude and/or aggressive to members of our team will be banned from commenting and posting on our channels.

Even if we do not reply, we are listening and will act on or pass on your comments to departments as appropriate.

Unless we state otherwise, the views and comments on any of our social media sites do not necessarily reflect our views.

We do not intend the media or politicians to use our social media platforms to contact us.