Our social media house rules

Welcome to our social media house rules. These cover all our social media profiles and accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Nextdoor, LinkedIn and YouTube.

We want our online community to be a safe, constructive, friendly, and supportive place, and we hope these rules will help explain why we may occasionally remove comments or posts on our profiles.

We want people to be able to have their say, even when comments are critical of us. But we reserve the right to remove posts when our house rules aren’t observed, and we may also block users without explanation if our guidelines are breached; repeat offenders may be banned from our profiles.

Here are the main pointers...

Everyone can see it

When you post on social media, it's in the public domain and anyone can see it.

You are responsible (by law) for all content you post or share, so please only post information and comments you’re happy for everyone to see, and that you’d feel comfortable saying if you were dealing with us face to face.

Don't give out your personal information and don't invade others’ privacy. If you don’t want your message to be public, please send us a direct message.

Keep it polite and respectful

Please be polite; we don't want anything that might cause offence or inappropriate content on our profiles.

We will respond to each message with the same politeness as if we were speaking to you in person and we ask the same of you when responding or posting on our profiles.

We will remove any rude, unlawful, or offensive comments, including:

swearing, personal attacks, or threats
posts that are libellous, harassing, discriminatory or violate the legal rights of others
comments or posts that are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive, or otherwise offensive

We will also take down any comments which share personal or confidential information or that disrupt, provoke, attack, or offend others.

Keep it on topic

We want our profiles to be safe and friendly places where you can speak to us, and where we can tell you about the work we do. For this reason, we want to make sure discussions stay on track.

We want you to be able to have your say, but if you post persistent, off-topic comments designed simply to provoke a response, we may hide them, especially where they may inhibit a discussion intended by the post.

We will remove posts which advertise products or services, including links to external websites and promotions and we may block you if you post spam or chain posts.

Keep it accurate

We welcome feedback, ideas and engagement, debate and opinion expressed on our social media profiles. However, we will remove any post we believe is incorrect or contains misinformation.

It is our responsibility to help keep the public safe, and we may block, hide, or remove any posts which are misleading or deceptive, which incite people to break the law, or those which encourage unlawful activities.

Bullying

We do not tolerate bullying, harassment, or victimisation on our accounts, and we will block any posts or comments which are libellous, defamatory, harassing, threatening or abusive.

If you name individual council workers or make offensive comments about anyone who works for us, we will remove these comments.

Please use the council’s formal complaints process if you want to make a complaint about the council or any council staff.

Social media networks offer advice and online support to help people who feel they are being bullied:

Abuse

Please report any user’s offensive comments or posts directly to social media networks. You can report abuse via the following links:

Monitoring and responding

We will try to assist you wherever possible and will do our best to respond within a few hours. We’ll read all messages and pass queries on to the most relevant part of our organisation.

Our accounts are usually monitored 9am to 5pm from Monday to Friday; enquiries sent outside these times will be responded to as soon as possible.

Please do not rely on our social media profiles to raise concerns, as they are not continuously monitored and may not be the most appropriate platform to contact us on.

Terms of use

Social media networks have clear terms of use, and all user comments that breach these terms will be reported to the relevant social media platform. You can read each platform’s terms of service here:

Neutrality

As a government organisation, we must remain politically neutral. We will not reply to, endorse, engage with or answer questions of a political nature on our platforms. Please contact your local councillor if you have a political query.

Likes, follows and shares

We carefully choose who we follow, like and share content from but we cannot follow, like or share everything requested or received.

We sometimes follow, like or share content we think is of interest or benefit to our residents and customers, but this does not mean that we endorse the originating person or organisation.

Please don’t be offended if we don’t like or follow you. We have to be very careful that what we share isn’t seen as us endorsing an opinion, organisation or individual.

Duplicate accounts and use of council branding

We will claim control of any duplicate social media accounts that are not our genuine accounts, and which claim to represent our venues or estates.

We will request removal of social media profiles that are set up using Chelmsford City Council imagery and branding without permission.

The final word

Our rules are here to make sure our online space is a safe and friendly space for all. Comments, replies, or posts that breach our house rules may be hidden or removed. Users that persistently break the rules may be blocked from commenting or posting. We reserve the right to update or change these house rules at any time.

Our social media accounts

We use our social media to inform, promote and improve our services, answer enquiries and link up with local people in Chelmsford. You can follow us on the profiles listed.

You can view, comment on, or share our videos on the following YouTube channels:

This is only available via the Nextdoor app, so we are unable to provide a link to our Nextdoor presence.