Question

Can a council ask to see emails sent to the Clark

Answer 1

Yes, if there's a valid reason, but you employ the Clerk to manage your correspondence and looking at every email would be an unjustified waste of everybody's time.

Answer 2

It’s vital that Councillors know what is happening and to my mind the Clerk should at the very least report to the Chair about any correspondence that effects the Council or its residents
I appreciate this is easier said than done with larger Councils

I know on my local Council that complaints are filtered out, that responses are made to residents without any Councillor being made aware of what’s happening often over quite pertinent issues

Answer 3

Be careful what you wish for here.  When I was clerk (a few years ago now) I was routinely getting literally 30 - 50 emails a day of which most were either adverts for services we didn't want or need or responses where someone had clicked "reply to all" (even where the response was "noted" or "thank you" - a particular bug of mine!).  Now as a councillor, the very last thing I need spamming my inbox is that kind of stuff.  My view is that we pay office staff to filter the rubbish and only send or report the important or relevant and to deal with the "litter bin is full" type stuff.

Answer 4

Can a council “ask?”

Ask who - the clerk?  The clerk is an employee not the Guv’nor  Why would the council need to “ask” the clerk?

No need to ask, it should be detailed in standing orders or IT policy that ALL PC email (which should of course be via a webmail provider under PC accounts) is open to examination.
There should be a routine examination of staff correspondence since this is a major PC / public interface.
How can a PC even pretend (which is the best many achieve) to claim to have delivered any form of corporate analysis and staff appraisal if they HAVEN’T reviewed the performance of staff / public interaction?

Ask to see emails?  It should be part of a documented process

Comments

Agreed I once estimated that over 80% if not more of my Parish’s workload was conducted without any oversight or involvement of the Councillors

Answer 5

This question can acetyl be put to bed by reference to the latest model contract of employment endorsed by NALC/SLCC and which states the any employee must:

vii. consent to the Council monitoring and recording your use of the Council’s electronic communications systems for the purpose of ensuring that the Council’s rules are being complied with and for legitimate business purposes.

Answer 6

the guidance provided in the good councillor guide makes reference to the fact that councillors must take in to account relevant facts in reaching a decision this does not mean all will arrive at the same point ,most council standing orders refer to a correspondence log to be maintained so a link to the email refered would i suspect be helpfull to everyone , some clerks by no means all like total control in any manner they see fit which is not acceptable as a councillor . there are some excellent search tools that can index vast amounts of data and then search for say key words  in micro seconds even those on clooud storage systems this helps a lot as i am dyslexic