A couple of weeks back I emailed Cinderford council using the email on their web site which is clerk@ . It was a simple query asking why the minutes from meetings were not shown on their web site. As you can see from the picture the last entries were for 2015, so nothing for 2 years.
Here is the text of the email I sent
Dear Sir
I noticed that your web sites holds no minutes for the last 2 years. Is there any reason you stopped publishing them ? Also you don’t have any events listed.
We have a free events calendar that you are welcome to use on our web site
Well, I never got a reply so I tweeted them asking if they ever answer emails. I got a reply on twitter saying they couldn’t find it, so I sent it again and got a delivered receipt. Still no reply so I thought perhaps there is a problem with my mail. I looked it up on mxtoolbox and several other sources. All report that it is set up correctly and is not on any spam list. I get regular emails from all over the country and from abroad. The forest of Dean county site has noproblems with my mail and neither does Gloucestershire County Council.
I can only conclude that:
1 My email was simply deleted because no one could be bothered to answer
2 Their mail server has serious problems
Now come on Cinderford Council. We do pay your wages there and it is just plain rude not to answer. As you have answered me on twitter then you can see my web site which has telephone and email visible there. I am not impressed
Comments
Thank you very much for your reply. I do appreciate it.
Dear Ed, I apologise that you have not had a reply sooner. The reason for your delayed response is wholly down to my fault.
The Cinderford Town Council website and social media accounts are maintained by Councillors who are all volunteers and not by Cinderford Town Council Staff members.
Whilst the email account you contacted is used by the clerk, they had contacted me for some information regarding the current state of the website before replying. Due to travel with work and a number of other events, I had been unable to provide a reply. The issue was further compounded as the council office is currently very busy due to the financial year end and as such, the clerk had been unable to chase me up.
In short, please accept our apologies for taking two weeks to respond. We are normally much more responsive.
The answer to your actual question is very similar. We have not taken a decision to stop publishing agenda and minutes of meetings, however, we have a limited amount of time to work with and we have had a number of big IT projects on-going over the past two years that a small group of councillors have been working hard on. These include the free public wifi, the town council webcams and also improvements to our meeting rooms to offer video conferencing in the near future. We will endeavour to update the documents on our website in the near future. In the meantime, minutes can be viewed at the council offices and we are happy to answer questions by email, phone or on social media.
Best regards
Cllr Chris Witham