I disagree Steve, it's simply that many Councillors choose not to correspond with the public in this manner. Same goes for most Council officers, indeed for most of the time when I worked at LBH I was 'banned' from posting on such forums and in many ways I concur with that ban, because sometimes it is hard to differentiate between whether the individual is posting as a private resident or as a Council representative. CCF is pretty good at managing to achieve that, although even he has occasionally made an understandable lapse of judgement when faced with provocation.There's no way of measuring the promptness of a Councillor's response via external means other than by the usual/recognised forms of communication either.Personally, I welcome the input of Councillors on these forums, but equally I don't expect a formal response via this medium to any enquiry for the reasons I've explained, and in no way do I think a Councillor's silence on these forums should be taken as any kind of signal. Recently there has been a significant reduction in contributions to these forums from Councillors of all political persuasion, and I think that is in part because they realise sometimes by posting on these forums they do themselves more harm than good.Going back to your original post, there's no likelihood of Councillors taking over the type of responses you'd usually receive from specialist Council officers/employees, I mean whilst many Councillors are specialists in their own particular fields of work they are not specialists in things like planning etc, so say you complained about next doors extension a Councillor couldn't reply by letter explaining the complexities of the planning legislation etc.
Adam Beamish ● 5913d