Social media

Most online communities have their own rules and guidelines, which we will always follow. We reserve the right to remove any contributions (or ban users) that break the rules or guidelines of the relevant community, or any of the following:

• be civil, tasteful and relevant
• do not post messages that are unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive
• do not swear
• do not post content copied from elsewhere, for which you do not own the copyright
• do not post the same message, or very similar messages, more than once (also called spamming)
• do not publicise your, or anyone else's, personal information, such as contact details
• do not advertise products or services
• do not impersonate someone else

Defamation

Please take care not to make defamatory statements. In law this means a statement that lowers the reputation of a person or organisation in the eyes of a reasonable person. By publishing such a statement we can both get into serious trouble. We will therefore remove any statement that could be deemed to be defamatory.

Pre election period

We, as opposed to our political Administration, must be politically neutral in its communications in accordance with the Local Government Act 1986 Guidance on Local Authority publicity. Therefore, please do not use any of our pages to promote party political messages or other content.

This is a particularly sensitive issue in the run-up to an election, local, Scottish, general or European, and we need to be mindful of how content may be perceived (regardless of what was intended).

We will remove any comments that we believe may compromise our obligation to remain politically neutral.

Complaints

Please note that you should not rely on a social media platform itself to raise concerns. Not all platforms will be monitored continuously, especially outwith normal working hours. If you have a formal complaint about us, you should contact us via our complaints procedure.

If you have a concern about something posted on a web or social media page that we are responsible for, please contact the Corporate Communications team online or by phoning 01835 826601 who will either deal with your issue or identify and contact the profile owner.