E-Mail out
To Lorraine McMillan, Caroline Innes and James Fletcher.
Dear Ms McMillan,
I am in possession of the report from the SPSO where they indicate that my complaint against East Renfrewshire Council has been upheld.
I note from the report that you allude to the fact that you are concerned about the use of officers time.
I am also very concerned with regards to misuse of their time and I feel that it is incumbent upon me to assist in this matter.
In my opinion it is a sign of the times when people over a certain age appear to have little or no knowledge with regards to the nuances of social media.
This is no more evident when leader Fletcher instructs that an officer makes enquiries through APSE in order to try and find out how to deal with our forum.
I have to remind you of what I have been saying to you and your staff since 2006.
It is of no use whatsoever to complain in general terms about the forum, no moderator is capable of mind reading.
In future I would suggest that you undertake the following procedure, which will save considerable officer time and ensure that you receive an adequate, timeous response.
If you or your monitoring officer, Jim Sneddon, has concerns please instruct him to take a note of the particular thread, i.e. The name shown at the top of each post.
Also take a note of the actually post (s) number, this is shown at the top right of each post and the number can be found to the right hand side of the hash tag, which is a symbol like this #
Those two identifiers together with specific information as to why the content of the postings are causing staff a problem is the recognised method of conveying a concern regarding social media.
If you follow this procedure I am positive that you will save a lot of officers, and the leader, time looking in the shadows for a solution.
I can assure you that the executive committee have agreed that should you have cause to complain in the future, we will take immediate action and remove the post concerned until such time as a decision has been made to uphold your complaint or reject it.
This is also the method that elected members should use and I would hope that leader Fletcher will pass this on to them.
Kind Regards
Tom Taylor