Use of Social Media
The Communications Team at Winchester City Council has several social media communication channels for updates, news and information. We like to hear from our residents and welcome comments and feedback. We’ll do our best to respond to your enquiries within two working days, but in most cases it will be within a few hours. We’ll try to help you, or direct you to people and/or departments who can, wherever possible.
Our working hours are 9am – 5pm, Monday to Friday. We’ll deal with social media enquiries sent outside this time as soon as possible when working hours resume. Information on how to contact us out of hours can be found at Contact us - Winchester City Council.
We expect users to offer the same courtesies that we extended to them so we have some simple house rules.
Social Media Guidelines
Please comply with the official Terms of Use specific to the relevant social media channel in addition to our guidelines. Please do not share your private information - your address and contact telephone numbers - on our pages as they are public forums. If you need to send this information to us, please email us directly: communications@winchester.gov.uk or send a direct message via the individual social media platform.
You are wholly responsible for any content you post and the language you use, including content that you choose to share. Content which is:
- abusive, violently graphic, defamatory or obscene;
- fraudulent, deceptive or misleading;
- in violation of any intellectual property rights;
- promoting other social media channels, websites or content considered spam;
- ‘flame-baiting’ - in which the aim of the post is to provoke heated and emotional responses;
- ‘trolling’ - in which the aim is to use off-topic, insulting or threatening remarks to upset another user or group of users;
may be hidden or removed. We reserve the right to remove, in whole or in part, posts which we feel are inappropriate. We consider the banning and/or blocking of users a last resort but will carry out this action if a user repeatedly contravenes guidelines. We encourage the reporting of such content to the social media platform. Anyone repeatedly engaging with us using content or language which falls into the above categories may also be blocked and/or reported to the platform.
We will not tolerate any form of bullying, harassment or victimisation of other users or our staff or councillors.
Pre-election Period
The pre-election period describes the period of time immediately before elections or referendums when specific restrictions on communications activity are in place. As council channels of communication, our accounts are governed by this period. During this period, anything that could be viewed as supporting or promoting a political party or candidate will be deleted.
Get In Touch
If you have any concerns or would like to report an issue on our social media pages, please email communications@winchester.gov.uk.
You can view or download our Policy documents from this page.