Civility & Respect Project

Social media is a simple, quick and effective way of communicating. It allows a user to reach whole communities at the click of a button, perfect for community engagement. Councils and councillors can constructively engage with communities rather than simply broadcasting information. But unfortunately, in a small number of cases councillors and councils can experience online abuse. Social media can become a place where individuals resort to abusive behaviour, such as, aggressive language, threats, trolling and bullying. Building up your following on social media is harder if there is a small number of angry voices which dominate.

We have worked in collaboration with Breakthrough Communications to develop a new guide to social media for councils, officers and councillors to actively address the issues of civility and respect on social media.  It is designed to guide you through the challenges of social media for local councils from handling trolling to legitimate challenge and scrutiny, from smear campaigns to politics.  The guide will help you to use positive language to tone to shape engagement and the conversation, to find common ground and engage with a variety of views.

There is also help on escalating issues, deleting and moderating comments, blocking abusive users, reporting online abuse and legal matters to the police or social media platform and deciding when it is time to get off of social media.

Respectful Social Media guide

The purpose of this Protocol is to guide councillors and officers of the council in their relations with one another. The Protocol’s intention is to build and maintain good working relationships between councillors and officers as they work together. Employees who are required to give advice to councillors are referred to as “officers” throughout.

A strong, constructive, and trusting relationship between councillors and officers is essential to the effective and efficient working of the council.

This Protocol also seeks to reflect the principles underlying the Code of Conduct which applies to councillors and the employment terms and conditions of officers. The shared objective is to enhance and maintain the integrity (real and perceived) of local government.

The following extract from the Local Government Association guidance on the 2020 Model councillor Code of Conduct states that:

“Both councillors and officers are servants of the public and are indispensable to one another. Together, they bring the critical skills, experience and knowledge required to manage an effective local authority.

At the heart of this relationship, is the importance of mutual respect. councillor-officer relationships should be conducted in a positive and constructive way. Therefore, it is important that any dealings between councillors and officers should observe reasonable standards of courtesy, should show mutual appreciation of the importance of their respective roles and that neither party should seek to take unfair advantage of their position or seek to exert undue influence on the other party.

councillors provide a democratic mandate to the local authority and are responsible to the electorate whom they represent. They set their local authority’s policy framework, ensure that services and policies are delivered and scrutinise local authority services.

[Councillors of the executive,] Chairs and vice chairs of committees have additional responsibilities. These responsibilities will result in increased expectations and relationships with officers that are more complex. Such councillors must still respect the impartiality of officers and must not ask them to undertake work of a party-political nature or compromise their position with other councillors or other officers.

Officers provide the professional advice and managerial expertise and information needed for decision making by councillors and to deliver the policy framework agreed by councillors. They are responsible for implementing decisions of councillors and the day-to-day administration of the local authority.

The roles are very different but need to work in a complementary way.

It is important for both sides to respect these differences and ensure that they work in harmony. Getting that relationship right is an important skill. That is why the code requires councillors to respect an officer’s impartiality and professional expertise. In turn officers should respect a councillor’s democratic mandate as the people accountable to the public for the work of the local authority. It is also important for a local authority to have a councillor-officer protocol which sets out how this relationship works and what both councillors and officers can expect in terms of mutual respect and good working relationships.”

This Protocol covers:

• The respective roles and responsibilities of the councillors and the officer;
• Relationships between councillors and officers;
• Where/who a councillor or an officer should go to if they have concerns;
• Who is responsible for making decisions.

Click here to download the protocol

One of the project objectives is to strengthen the governance arrangements across our sector to better support councils.

The Dignity at Work Policy is the first of a series of new or revised governance documents which are being developed by the project team.

The documents have been reviewed by a focus group made up of clerks, councillors, monitoring officers, and county associations, and approved by NALC and SLCC for use.

The Dignity at Work policy will replace any previous Bullying and Harassment Policy. It encompasses behaviours beyond bullying and harassment, and zero tolerance, with the aim of dealing with concerns before they escalate.

It has been produced with supporting guidance because it is so important that any commitment made in the policy is applied in practice. 

Wording has been suggested to demonstrate a council’s commitment to promoting dignity and respect where they have signed up to the Civility and Respect Pledge.

Councils who have not signed up to this are requested to consider making this pledge which is based on basic behaviours and expectations of all council representatives to create workplaces that allow people to maintain their dignity at all times. Click to take the pledge: SLCC | NALC.

Click here to download the policy

One of the critical issues already identified by the project is that the Code of Conduct produced by the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2021 has not been widely adopted. The Civility and Respect project has endorsed the LGA model Code of Conduct and the guidance notes aimed to help understanding and consistency of approach towards the code.

The code is a template for councils to adopt in whole and or with amendments to take into account local circumstances.

The code and guidance have been designed to protect our democratic role, encourage good conduct, and safeguard the public’s trust and confidence in the role of councillor in local government.

While it sets out the minimum standards of behaviour expected, together with the guidance, it is designed to encourage councillors to model the high standards expected, to be mutually respectful even if they have personal or political differences, to provide a personal check and balance, and to set out the type of conduct that could lead to complaints being made of behaviour falling below the standards expected of councillors and in breach of the code. It is also to protect councillors, the public, local authority officers and the reputation of the local government.

Download the model code of conduct.

The Civility and Respect Project team has worked with Hoey Ainscough Associates Ltd to revise the Local Government Association (LGA) Code of Conduct guidance to reflect the needs of our sector better. The revised guidance has been approved for use by NALC and the SLCC and endorsed by LGA.

The LGA produced a revised code of conduct in December 2020, supported by a guidance document they first circulated in July 2021. The supporting guidance was a beneficial document but not tailored to the nuances of local (parish and town) councils. With the support of the LGA, the project team has revised the guidance to precisely reflect the needs of and situations relevant to local councils.

The guidance covers the following:

• The general principles of councillor conduct
• Application of the model councillors’ code of conduct

General obligations under the code include:

• Respect
• Bullying
• Harassment
• Discrimination
• Impartiality
• Misuse of position

Protecting the reputation of the council, including:

• Declarations of interest
• Bias and pre-determination

Download the supporting guidance

The Civility and Respect ‘continuum’ illustrates how issues escalate over time. Our research has indicated that councils experiencing poor conduct or vexatious demands/complaints often experience problems repeatedly over a significant period of time. The longer an issue is permitted to continue, unaddressed, the more complex, time consuming, and expensive the resolution becomes.

The illustration to the right shows this continuum.

Please click on the image to enlarge it.