Social media policy

Fareham Borough Council recognises the value and increasing importance of social media. On this basis, it is important that the Council has a clear policy about how social media is used.

Our social media channels

The Council has the following social media accounts:

• Facebook : Our Facebook page is called 'Fareham Borough Council' and our posts and comments will appear with that name. However, it is not always possible to join a group as an organisation, so on those occasions the Council operates under the personal name of Henry Cort. For transparency, we have stated this information in our Facebook story. Henry Cort does not have an email address and is not used for any other purpose than that stated above.
• Instagram 
• Twitter 
• LinkedIn 
• YouTube 

At present, the Communications team is responsible for all the Council's social media accounts. Each account is monitored Monday to Friday, within normal working hours.

We welcome feedback and comments on our social media pages, but we will remove or hide comments and posts that:

• use swear words
• use language that is abusive, harassing and threatening
• use sexual imagery, sexual references or language that is sexually offensive
• attack or disparage anyone on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief or sex.
• use language that could be construed as unlawful, prejudicial to court proceedings, defamatory, harmful, libellous or profane.
• contain the same message or very similar messages more than once (spamming)
• contain off-topic, controversial or irrelevant messages (trolling)
• contain fake news
• publicise anyone's personal information, such as contact details

If comments of this type are persistently made by the same user, we will block that user from commenting on our page.

Posting messages

The Council uses the following rules when posting to our social media sites:

• We are civil, tasteful and relevant
• We do not post messages that are discriminatory, unlawful; prejudicial to court proceedings, abusive, harassing, defamatory, threatening, harmful, libellous, obscene, profane, or sexually or racially offensive. This includes comments directed at someone else, linking to inappropriate content or posting inappropriate images
• We do not swear
• We do not post content for which we do not own the copyright or have consent
• We do not post the same message or very similar messages more than once
• We do not publicise anyone's personal information, such as contact details
• We do not advertise products or services
• We do not impersonate someone else
• We do not promote political parties or activities
• We follow the rules of the relevant social media website.

Contacting us

We understand that not everyone uses or has access to social media. If you need to contact Fareham Borough Council, see our contact details for the ways that you can get in touch with us.