THE Liberal Democrat group on Warrington Borough Council claim they were “gagged” – after one of their emails went into the authority’s “spam” inbox.
As a result, questions the Lib Dems wished to ask at last night’s meeting of the council were not seen by officers until after the deadline for receipt of questions.
Cllr Ian Marks (pictured), chairman of the Lib Dem council group said: “We are very angry about this. How many emails from the public are disappearing into the same black hole?”
A letter from the council’s solicitor to all councillors and senior managers stated: “There wi9ll be no questions from councillors considered at the meeting.
“Questions were submitted by a councillor but officers only became aware of them after the deadline for questions had passed.”
Cllr Marks said: “We are very angry about this. The questions were submitted on time but were directed into the council’s ‘spam inbox’. Copies sent to Cllrs Barr and Walker arrived immediately after being sent and an email sent to the council’s chief executive from the same email account just 17 minutes earlier arrived perfectly satisfactorily.
“It is not our fault they were treated as spam and the council should accept them as valid questions. We have to assume the council is looking for ways to avoid answering our questions on the budget covering waste treatment, adult social care and the proposed housing company and other questions on green bin charges, the libraries working Group and HS2 and salt mines.
“The council is saying that it would not have long enough to prepare answers. They still had two days when the mistake came to light and in any case you would have hoped they had answers to the budget questions already. If not, it just confirms it was just a ‘wish list’ budget as we said at the time.
If the questions had been taken at the council meeting we would have accepted written answers anyway.
“How many emails from the public are going into the same black hole? Are these treated as unacceptable in the same way?
Deputy group leader, Cllr Peter Walker added, “I am very annoyed that my motion requiring the infrastructure needed to support major developments be agreed, and funding secured, before permission is granted, has been withdrawn.
“Following a request from the legal department, we made a slight change to the original wording. This must have been acceptable because the motion was published in the council summons. Now it has been withdrawn. What is going on? So much for openness and transparency”
10 Comments
I think that there should be a separate email address that questions are sent to that generates a response for the questioner.
Unfortunately I didn’t send my question as the member of the public in until last Thursday 16th March so I missed the drop dead date. However it is now 5 days later and I am yet to receive an acknowledgement that it has been received and will be on the list for next time in May. Hopefully it will arrive soon otherwise I will be sending a reminder. In addition I will be checking the publicised Full Council details to ensure that my question as a member of the public is included to make sure that I don’t suffer the same fate as councillors.
You’ve got too much common sense to suffer the same fate as councillors Geoff !
If an email is important use the delivery and read receipt system and if not read follow up with a phone call – also deliver them personally printed out and then they have no excuse
More common sense – so why don’t these councillors have it?
Cllr Marks – master of the art of deception & decisions behind closed doors is far too wiley to be dense so the question must be “how important to him was it really for his questions to be read or how advantageous for him if they were not?”
Easy to sit back pretending your hands are tied whilst others tackle the unpopular topics and then play the self publicist drama queen!
Just like press releases really.
If the deadline is for the receipt of questions then these should have been included – the council had received them, they just didn’t bother to check their spam emails regularly like any even vaguely professional person would. And that’s quite apart from the question of why aren’t councilors email addresses on the “safe” list to ensure that they are never treated as spam?
If they did what you sensibly propose Pete, they would close off some of the excuse options for failing to answer reasonably posed and timed questions.
In reply to PETE GROVE And “any vaguely professional person” if they considered their email ‘important’ and wanted to ensure it was read would have checked it had been received.
Perhaps these councillors considered that the ‘safest’ place for their emails was the spam box
POSITRON – I assume that ‘the reasonably posed and timed questions’ of which you speak must of course be those questions written from members of the public. 🙂
I ambivalent who actually poses the reasonable questions in a timely manner SHA, provided they are honestly and unambiguously answered in such a way we, the public, are provided with factual information to enable us to know what is really going on. Sadly, our political system like the legal system is adversarial, which of itself engenders smoke and mirror answers aimed mostly at providing misleading answers that prevent that eventuality.