Cassington Parish Council
This Policy was adopted at a meeting on 4th March 2021 and will be reviewed in two years or sooner should legislation dictate.
SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY
Introduction
The use of digital and social media and electronic communication enables Cassington 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 (www.cassington-pc.gov.uk) and uses email to communicate.
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 services it delivers. When these changes occur, this Policy will be updated to reflect the new arrangements.
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.
Parish Council email
The Clerk to the Parish Council has a specific Council email address – cassingtonclerk@gmail.com The email account is monitored mainly during 9am-1pm, Monday to Friday, and we aim to reply to all questions sent as soon as we can. An ‘out of office’ message is used when appropriate.
The Clerk is responsible for dealing with email received and passing on any relevant mail to members or external agencies for information and/or action. All communications on behalf of the Council will usually come from the Clerk, and/or otherwise will always be copied to the Clerk.
Individual Councillors are at liberty to communicate directly with parishioners in relation to their own personal views, if appropriate, copy to the Clerk. Any emails sent to the Clerk or Councillors in their official capacity will be subject to The Freedom of Information Act 2018.
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.
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 communication is a major factor in delivering improvement.
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 that email trails have been remoed.