Question
Will the Leader of the Council please describe in precise detail the Council’s declared policy, and how it duly guides its Members, on the use of private emails (rather than their official wokingham.gov.uk email addresses) when communicating to any individual, group, or media on matters connected with the Member’s status as elected Councillors?
Minutes:
Will the Leader of the Council please describe in precise detail the Council’s declared policy, and how it duly guides its Members, on the use of private emails (rather than their official wokingham.gov.uk email addresses) when communicating to any individual, group, or media on matters connected with the Member’s status as elected Councillors?
Answer
The Information Security and Acceptable Use of ICT Policy (which is an internal Council policy for employees not for Members) sets out the standards expected regarding the use of ICT which includes email use.
An extract from the Policy states:
“Emails sent when conducting Council business become part of the Council’s corporate record, even if sent from private business or personal email accounts. Council email accounts must not be used to conduct personal business or to run a private business.”
All new staff (and existing staff at least every 2 years) are required to sign the Acceptable Use Policy.
Councillors may use private or other email addresses when conducting Council business. For example, Councillors are contacted by residents at non-Wokingham.gov.uk addresses, and, for example particularly, where Councillors are also Town or Parish Councillors.
However, as stated earlier, such correspondence, if it pertains to the Borough Council, forms part of the Council’s corporate record.
Your question also gives me the opportunity to apologise for the arrangements tonight, to you and all our Members and residents. The Opposition insisted that everyone from their Group who wishes to vote can vote and our Public Health advice insists that we cannot have more in the Chamber than we have.
I believe that votes from a politically balanced Chamber was more appropriate and worked well last month. It is regrettable that every vote will be a named vote, as the Mayor has stated. Consequently, it is unlikely that we will progress with much of the Agenda. That is a shame.
Supplementary Question
When a Member is elected, they are given a Wokingham.gov.uk email address. To my simple mind, that is all a Member needs to communicate on any matter in which the Council is involved. But it appears that the Constitution does not provide a policy framework to guide Members’ use of their private email address when communicating as Members.
My enquiries indicate that there is some sort of convention that private email addresses are used during election periods instead of official Council email addresses. It strikes me that it would be helpful to all Members that the Constitution should prescribe clear rules on the use of private emails by Members. Two examples of the current confusion are illustrated by the fact that you and Councillor Howe and his predecessor, Councillor Pitts, have always signed off your District Councillors column in the Wargrave News with your private email addresses but, since last December, you have used your official Wokingham.gov.uk addresses. A second example is the use by some Members of the word Councillor in their private email addresses.
I understand that Whitehall guidance says that Ministers should use Whitehall email addresses and, if they do not, should ensure that they copy private emails and other communications concerning official business to their department’s computers, so that a full record is preserved.
Would this Westminster guidance on private email use be a good starting position for WBC to create a suitable set of rules and will you, Councillor Halsall, give it your enthusiastic backing?
Supplementary Answer
The answer is no. It is not a policy that can be addressed on the hoof like this. It is something that we will have to reply to in a written answer.