Bisley Parish Council
Social Media and Electronic Communication Policy
The use of digital and social media and electronic communications enables Bisley Parish
Council to interact in a way that improves the communications both within the Council and
between the Council and the people, businesses, and agencies it works with and serves.
The Council has a website and noticeboards and uses email to communicate directly. The
Council will always try to use the most effective channel for its communications. Over time
the Council may add to the channels of communication that it uses as it seeks to improve and
expand the service it delivers. When these changes occur, this Policy will be updated to reflect
the new arrangements.
Communications from the Council will meet the following criteria:
• Be civil, tasteful and relevant;
• Not contain content that is knowingly unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory,
abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually orientated or racially
offensive;
• Not contain content knowingly copied from elsewhere, for which we do not own
copyright;
• Not contain any personal information;
• If it is official Council business it will be moderated by either the Chairman/Vice
Chairman of the Council or the Clerk to the Council;
• Social media will not be used for dissemination of any political advertising.
Parish Council Website
Where necessary, we may direct those contacting us to our website to see the required
information, or we may forward their question to one of our Councillors for consideration and
response. We may not respond to every comment we receive particularly if we are
experiencing a heavy workload.
The Council may, at its discretion, allow and enable approved local groups to have and
maintain a presence on its website for the purpose of presenting information about the
group’s activities. The local group would be responsible for maintaining the content and
ensuring that it meets the Council’s ‘rules and expectation’ for the website. The Council
reserves the right to remove any or all a local group’s information from the website if it feels
that the content does not meet the Council’s ‘rules and expectation’ for its website. Where
content on the website is maintained by a local group it should be clearly marked that such
content is not the direct responsibility of the Council.
Parish Council email
The Clerk to the Council has their own council email address clerk@bisleyparishcouncil.gov.uk
The email account is monitored mainly during office hours, Monday to Friday, and we aim to
reply to all questions sent as soon as we can. An ‘out of office’ message should be used when
appropriate.
The Clerk is responsible for dealing with email received and passing on any relevant email to
members of or external agencies for information and/or action. All communications on behalf
of the Council will usually come from the Clerk, and/or otherwise would always be copied to
the Clerk. All new emails requiring data to be passed on, will be followed up with the Data
Consent form for completion before action is taken with that correspondence.
Individual councillors are at liberty to communicate directly with parishioners in relation to
their own personal views, if appropriate, copy to the Clerk. NB any emails copied to the Clerk
become official and will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
These procedures will ensure that a complete and proper record of all correspondence is kept.
Do not forward personal information on to other people or groups outside of the Council, this
includes names, addresses, email, IP addresses and cookie identifiers.
Parish Council Facebook account
A Facebook account can be used to inform residents of the work of the Parish Council, to promote
information out to the community but will not be used to engage in a two-way dialogue.
SMS (texting) and WhatsApp
Members and the Clerk may use SMS and WhatsApp as a convenient way to communicate at
times. All are reminded that this policy also applies to such messages.
Internal communication and access to information within the Council
The Council is continually looking at ways to improve its working and the use of social media
and electronic communications is a major factor in delivering improvements and is widely
used within Local Government.
Councillors are expected to abide by the Code of Conduct and the Data Protection Act in all
their work on behalf of the Council.
As more and more information becomes available at the press of a button, it is vital that all
information is treated sensitively and securely. Councillors are expected to maintain an
awareness of the confidentiality of information that they have access to and not to share
confidential information with anyone. Failure to properly observe confidentiality may be seen
as a breach of the Council’s Code of Conduct and will be dealt with through its prescribed
procedures (at the extreme it may also involve a criminal investigation).
Members should also be careful only to cc. essential recipients on emails i.e. to avoid use of
the “Reply to All” option if at all possible, but of course copying in all who need to know and
ensuring the email trails have been removed.
Adopted by Bisley Parish Council on the 14th May 2018
Updated on 23rd September 2020 & September 2023
Review due September 2025
