Council updates member and officer relations protocol amid social media concerns

Tandridge District Council is to update its member and officer relations protocol for the first time in 18 years in part to take account of potential attacks on officers on social media.

A draft of the new protocol went to the overview and scrutiny committee this month and is due to be put to full council.

The committee report noted: “There is no statutory requirement for councils to adopt such protocols, but it is good practice to do so.

“Given that the council already has a protocol in place it would benefit from being updated.”

The protocol noted that the chief executive, section 151 officer and monitoring officer had legal responsibilities in addition to their obligations to the council and its members and “councillors must respect these obligations, must not obstruct officers in the discharge of these responsibilities and must not victimise officers for discharging these responsibilities”.

While councillors could question how services are run they “should avoid undermining, or making detrimental remarks about, individual named officers at meetings, or in any public forum, including on social media”.

It said: “An ethos of mutual respect, trust and courtesy should underpin relations and be reflected in both in-house and public capacities”, with both officers and councillors observing the Nolan principles of public life.

“It is not the role of councillors to control the day-to-day management of the authority’s services. They should not seek to give instructions to officers other than in accordance with the terms of reference of their committee.”

Tandridge operates a committee system and the report said chairs and vice-chairs of these would have more regular contact with officers than would other councillors, but must respect their impartiality and “not ask them to undertake work of a party political nature, or to do anything which would prejudice that impartiality”.

Mark Smulian