Beddington North and The Wrythe not on email??
This is my latest survey of Councillors public email addresses on the Council website.
The latest report is that 16 out of 18 wards now have at least one Councillor with a public email address.
I suggested in early June that it would make sense if at least one Councillor in each ward had a public email address. I was trying to be fair on the technophobes on the Council by only suggesting at least one at this stage, though you might think the Party Groups were thinking of getting all of them to have public addresses, even if all emails were then being forwarded to just one of them in the ward.
Which party will be the first to get all their Councillors with a public email address? Currently 19 out of 32 Lib Dems have them and 19 out of 22 Tories. The best Area Committee for public email addresses is Cheam and Worcester with 12 out of 12 and the worst is Beddington and Wallington with just 6 out of 12.
The only two sets of constituents now without a public email address for any Councillor at all are:
1. Beddington North
2. The Wrythe
Before the Tories get round to asking a Council question about this, it might make sense for at least one Lib Dem in each ward to set up a quick public "@sutton.gov.uk" either to use at the members room or to forward to any other email address. Indeed why not get the group political assistant (formerly the Head of Leadership Office) to sort it!
I am sure the Lib Dem Group Chair (Whip) might even want to encourage this good practice. Even more so as she is in one of the two wards affected!:-)
I will report further on this in September to see if all wards are then covered.
The latest report is that 16 out of 18 wards now have at least one Councillor with a public email address.
I suggested in early June that it would make sense if at least one Councillor in each ward had a public email address. I was trying to be fair on the technophobes on the Council by only suggesting at least one at this stage, though you might think the Party Groups were thinking of getting all of them to have public addresses, even if all emails were then being forwarded to just one of them in the ward.
Which party will be the first to get all their Councillors with a public email address? Currently 19 out of 32 Lib Dems have them and 19 out of 22 Tories. The best Area Committee for public email addresses is Cheam and Worcester with 12 out of 12 and the worst is Beddington and Wallington with just 6 out of 12.
The only two sets of constituents now without a public email address for any Councillor at all are:
1. Beddington North
2. The Wrythe
Before the Tories get round to asking a Council question about this, it might make sense for at least one Lib Dem in each ward to set up a quick public "@sutton.gov.uk" either to use at the members room or to forward to any other email address. Indeed why not get the group political assistant (formerly the Head of Leadership Office) to sort it!
I am sure the Lib Dem Group Chair (Whip) might even want to encourage this good practice. Even more so as she is in one of the two wards affected!:-)
I will report further on this in September to see if all wards are then covered.
posted by Charlie Mansell at 4:07 pm
4 Comments:
Quite frankly as a council, Sutton is light years behind my council Merton where all councillors have a Merton e-mail address and it is displayed on the website.
With increasing amount of correspondence from constituents coming in on e-mail, it is more important then ever for councillors yo have access.
Within Merton nearly all councillors use e-mail and training is provided for those less IT minded, it is time Sutton got itself brought up to modern standards and councillor's use e-mail.
This whole story makes Sutton Council seem pretty amateur body as nearly all councillors in most other boroughs have IT addresses. The IT addresses provided also seem to be a complete mish-mash, with not a huge number using sutton.gov.uk domain. Are some ashamed to promote the Council??
You are of course quite right in ana era when it is possible that up to 75% of Sutton households have access to an email address.
Swansea had every Councillor with an internal email link by 1990 and many Councils gave a public email address to all their Councillors by 2002.
Sutton is far behind this.
I was not taking a proscriptive approach as I recognised some Councillors might be a nervous about having an email address. All I was asking was for each group of ward to have one email address, which I think should be the current minimum.
I suspect my article may encourage all Councillors having a public email address in the near future, which will be a good thing.
I retained my Conservative cwcanet.com email address so that I could keep some sort of control over receiving my mail. I have several email addresses and need to be able to see them both at work and at home (and eventually on my mobile later this year) which would be a nightmare to arrange via the Council not least because I still haven't received the details of my sutton.gov.uk account that I applied for after the election.
Communication is everything as a councillor so the more control that I retain the better as far as I am concerned.
I think Paul's point is a good one.
My main issue is that 2 whole wards have no public email contact details at all!
If a Councillor wants to use their own email adress rather than the "sutton.gov.uk" then that is fine by me.
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