Cllr Suzanne Fletcher has been Lib Dem Mayor of Stockton Borough Council since last May, and as Mayor, she’s been writing up her days on a blog on the Borough Council’s website.
The idea has been a huge success. The community groups she has visited have been thrilled with the coverage and the photographs on the website. There’s even been a small amount of evidence that some groups have invited her just so they can appear on the blog.
Unfortunately, the blog has been removed by over-zealous interpretations of “purdah”, which is a legal concept preventing councils from publicizing councillors standing for election, during the election period. Normally, councils release no new press releases featuring councillors for the whole of April, and they similarly don’t call public meetings or publish magazines with councillor faces in. Other councils have been perfectly happy to leave the historical press releases on their websites, but in Stockton, they have decided to remove a year’s worth of blog postings and executive councillor press releases.
Fortunately, Suzanne had backups of her work, and has been able to restore a version of her blog back on a free host. Now all she needs is for Google (other search engines are available) to pick up the new address so that people can find her again. So could you please log into your own blog and post a link to Suzanne Fletcher’s Stockton Mayor Blog.
And while you’re at it, why not read a bit about Suzanne’s year?
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Legally, if she did this on a council computer originally, the council might own the copywrite ! If she uses it elsewhere, she might find that it will cause her more trouble than she will want during an election