Social media

We use a number of social media platforms to tell you about our services and to share news stories and important messages quickly. We want our social pages to be somewhere where you can ask questions, seek advice and have a conversation about Nuneaton and Bedworth as an area, we are here to help.

We also want our pages to be a social place and if you can help someone who has a question, please feel free to get involved in the discussion.

We want you to have your say and we do not censor comments, even if they are critical of the Council, but we do have some rules that we expect everyone to follow and will remove posts that do not keep to these rules.

The following rules apply on all of our social platforms.

Breaching these rules may result in a temporary or permanent suspension from our social channels.

Respect others

• We encourage users to comment on our posts but we do not tolerate bullying or harassment. Anybody making abusive, disruptive or offensive commentators will be blocked from posting on the page
• Persistent breach of the guidlines may result in a block from our pages
• Be civil, tasteful and relevant
• Do not post messages that are unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually-oriented or offensive to races, religious groups or disabilities

Privacy

• Do not publicise your, or anyone else's, personal information, such as contact details
• Do not impersonate someone else
• Do not mention officers by name

No swearing - keep it clean

• We will remove posts containing swearing. We do not want it on our page and other people do not want to read it. We know some people have strong feelings on issues that are discussed, but please get your point across without using foul language

Keep it friendly

• We know that not everyone will agree with one another all of the time and we welcome debate on our social pages. But we will remove, without notice, anything that we consider to be libellous or offensive

Politics

• We will not comment on political issues and reserve the right to remove overtly political comments made on our social pages
• This is particularly important in the run up to elections, when councils have to be very careful not to do or say anything that appears to favour a particular political party or candidate

We do not allow commercial advertising

• We are happy to promote council services, partner organisations, voluntary groups or charities connected to the council on our social pages. However, we cannot accept links, comments or wall posts promoting private businesses
• We support local businesses and urge them to consider the opportunities presented by our social channels where there are opportunities for local firms to network, find information and take advantage of the local support on offer

Monitoring

• We monitor our social accounts during office hours, Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm. We will remove any content that does not meet with our guidelines as soon as we see it

Libel

• Take care not to make libellous statements. In law this means a statement that lowers the reputation of a person or organisation in the eyes of a reasonable person. By publishing such a statement we can both get into serious trouble. We will take down any statement that could be libellous

Pre-election period

• In the run-up to an election, Local or General, councils have to very careful not to do or say anything that could be seen in any way to support any political party or candidate. The period is known as the pre-election period. We will continue to publish important service announcements using social media but may have to remove responses if they are overtly party political