Use of personal email addressed correspondence.

Question

Having access to the .gov.uk email address not all councillors are engaging with this system, although they use there Business email address with a disclaimer. This often when heated topics arise can lead to `hostile` intentional `baiting` to get a reaction. Would you agree that the Monitoring Officer should have access to these emails in the event of complaint.

Answer 1

If you’ve got a copy of the emails then I don’t see a problem as you’d do the same with a letter

During the course of a complaint against myself and another Councillor an email from a member of staff ( marked Confidential ) which was critical of my fellow Councillor was circulated
So I informed the Monitoring Officer as an example of the poor behaviour we were experiencing

Answer 2

Some councils do not use business emails but their own personal addresses - are you suggesting the monitoring officer should have access to these also?
All councillors are part civil service, albeit volunteers, it is considered good practice to have business emails which assists the clerks in FOI requests and Data protection issues.

Comments

I disagree on two fronts Parish Councillors are elected public officials with the rights and responsibilities that attach to that status
They might “ volunteer “ their time but they are not volunteers
Following on from that as elected public officials they have no choice but to comply with the FOI and GDPR
Personal email accounts shouldn’t be used for Parish Council business

Answer 3

cllrs should not be using external company E Mail addresses for council correspondence. They risk putting personal data on a third party data systems and breaching GDPR

Comments

Much of the same opinion on all comments but why do some believe they are above the law, this is what I could imagine the Wild West was like only without the guns. It will be a roll of the dice but as Jules put the similarity to a hard copy being passed on then why indeed not emails and also the risk of third party data systems, having recently been asked to complete a declaration for holding information of Council documents in relation to any member of the Electorate and if so why and how much. To me no distinction between either of these two topics.

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There is a fairly straight forward, practical and easy to implement ‘solution’ to the problem of people using 3rd party email accounts rather than provided .gov accounts.
It dovetails nicely into a separate problem which has the same solution.
Amend IT / communication strategy or SOs (which ever best applies) to state that any electronic correspondence from / between Cllrs will be discarded unless received via .gov account.
If you use 3rd party email, it goes straight in the bin. Won’t take too long for people to realise it’s futile and start adopting proper procedures. Sometimes the stick is better than the carrot.