Rights of Parish Council staff to monitor Councillors email

Question

We are just updating our email etc policy & it contains  the usual provisions allowing the Council as employer to monitor employees’ council email accounts. However it has now included the same right relating to Councillors. Can someone point me to the legislation which allows this please?

Answer 1

Increasing number of councils (encouraged by many "local associations") are including said policy citing various reasons. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.  Some have indicated they are minded to remove previous consent for electronic summons etc (document usually signed routinely) and will make officers walk/post summons in response.  Certainly clear from some of the debates some have lost confidence in their officers and see this policy as a "snoopers charter" fearing staff will be "spying" on them.  To be honest I personally could not care less whether staff did or didn't read my Cllr emails (suspect they have little inclination to and have not the time to either)

Comments

My understanding is that as a Body the Parish Council needs access to all the emails for FOI purposes
Recently at Borough level we were asked for permission to trawl our emails for enable them to respond to an FOI request and told that if we weren’t happy with this we had to do it ourselves
At Borough level I’m happy at Parish level based on past experience I  work on the theory  each and every email is read
I’ve had a letter addressed to me via the office opened by the Clerk who then criticised the contents and the majority of my fellow Councillors couldn’t see a problem with that
The moral of the story I’d choose your method of  communication with care