Social media guidelines

Social media acceptable use

Most social networks and microblogs have their own rules and guidelines, which all users should follow. In addition, the council's expectation is that people interacting with us on social media follow these rules:

• Messages are civil, tasteful and relevant.
• Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive.
• Do not swear.
• Do not post the same message, or very similar messages, more than once.
• Do not post misinformation or share information which is factually incorrect.
• Do not post content copied from elsewhere, for which you do not own the copyright.
• Do not publicise your, or anyone else's, personal information, such as contact details.
• Do not impersonate someone else or use a fake profile.
• Do not use any of our pages to promote party political messages or other content.

Where posts do not meet these expectations, we will endeavour to remind users of these rules and ask that they take action to remove inappropriate content and refrain from further infringements in the future.

The council reserves the right to remove, hide or mute content from our social media pages that we consider to be inappropriate.

In extreme cases, where people continue to break the above rules after receiving a warning about inappropriate behaviour, the council reserves the right to block or ban users from interacting with the council. This includes any and all social media channels, and the council will not enter into debate or discussion on this matter.

Contacting the council

The council's social media pages exist primarily to raise awareness of recent council decisions, service developments, upcoming events, and new opportunities which may be of interest to our residents and local businesses.

We also use social media to alert residents to service disruption and, during emergencies, to signpost residents to key information and advice to keep them safe.

The council's social media channels are monitored during office hours (Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00). Messages and posts sent outside of these periods may not be seen or responded to until the next working day. If you need to contact the council in an emergency, please call 01362 656870 where an out-of-hours service is in place.

As the council's social media staff often do not have access to customer records and information about individual services, queries about council services or service issues should be submitted via thisweb form, via email to contactus@breckland.gov.uk, or by calling 01362 656870. The team relevant to your question can respond to you directly.

Similarly, detailed queries should be submitted using the Freedom of Information process, which is detailed at:How do I submit a Freedom of Information Request?

If you have raised an issue with a service before and do not feel that this has been adequately dealt with, you may wish to submit a formal complaint to the council. Formal complaints will not be accepted via social media. Instead, you shouldsubmit a complaint using our Corporate Feedback page.