How we use social media

We use our social media accounts to highlight services, promote council news and share consultations and events. We also use them to share information from our partners and community groups that we think will be of interest to our followers.

Our social media accounts are managed by a small team and are not the best place for general enquiries or to report issues. For a direct response, we recommend you use the following:

What to expect when you contact us through social media

If you ask us a direct question or report a local issue to us through social media:

  • we will always be polite and helpful
  • if we can answer your question directly, we will
  • in most instances, we are likely to signpost you to an online form
  • if the council can't help you, we will make suggestions for alternative organisations you can contact - if we are aware of any

To keep your personal data private, please never disclose information of a confidential nature when you contact us via social media.

Responding and replying

Our main social media accounts Twitter (@lichfield_dc) and Facebook (Lichfield District Council) are monitored during the working week, Monday - Friday 9am to 5pm.

We aim to respond to queries within 24 hours during the working week.

Our other social media accounts are also managed by small teams and may have different/slower response times. Most of our social media accounts are not monitored outside of working hours.

We recommend that if your query is serious or urgent, please contact us directly via email or telephone or visit our council offices.

Liking and following

We usually only follow or like accounts that provide information that is linked to our work as a council (for example central government accounts, local media, and our partners) or those whose information we can pass on for the benefit of local residents.

There will also be times we’ll need to like or follow an account in order to take part in conversations.

Please don’t be offended if we don’t like or follow you/your organisation on social media.

Just because we like/follow someone, retweet/share their information, it doesn’t mean that we endorse them.

Sharing and retweeting

We try and share/retweet information we think will be of interest or of use to our residents, however please don’t be offended if we don’t retweet/share something you want us to.

If we share information, we are not necessarily endorsing it.

How we moderate our social media activity

We reserve the right to keep a record of and remove any contributions that:

  • are not civil or polite
  • are rude or contain swear words
  • are unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory, offensive, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive
  • are repetitive (known as spamming)
  • contain personal information, such as contact details.
  • If you tweet us with a question that contains your data (such as your postcode) and we respond to it (for example a question about why your bin was not emptied), please be aware that our followers will be able to see our response to you. We would recommend the best way to report a local issue is through www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/reportit

We reserve the right to block accounts if they contravene the above guidelines.

Pre-election period

In the period before an election (called purdah), we will publish service announcements using social media. However, we have to be careful not to say or do anything that could be seen to support any political party or candidate. So, although we will probably post/share less, it doesn’t mean we’re not still working - we just won’t be as active on social media during the run up to an election. We will exercise caution sharing/liking posts and tweets from individuals during purdah. 

This is in line with government guidance.