Seven inboxes, one parish
A resident knows Councillor Patel from the school gate, so they email her about the overgrown hedge on the footpath. Another resident messages a different councillor on social media about dog fouling on the playing field. A third emails the clerk and copies in three councillors, two of whom reply with slightly different answers. One councillor forwards things to the clerk promptly. Another means to and forgets.
The clerk hears about some of this at the next meeting, when a councillor mentions that 'a few people have been in touch about the hedge'. Nobody knows how many, or whether anyone replied. Months later a resident complains that they wrote twice and heard nothing, and the email is in the personal account of a councillor who has since stood down.
Why enquiries scatter
Residents contact the person they know, which is natural in a small community. Councillors are volunteers using their own email and phones. There is no single place where enquiries are recorded, and no expectation that they will be, so each councillor handles contacts their own way.
| Where enquiries land | What usually happens |
|---|---|
| Clerk's email | Answered, and logged if the clerk keeps a log |
| A councillor's council email | Answered by the councillor, clerk may not know |
| A councillor's personal email | Mixed in with their own mail, sometimes lost |
| Social media messages | Rarely recorded anywhere |
| Stopped in the street | Remembered, or not |
The cost of scattered contact
Residents get inconsistent answers, or none, which damages trust. The clerk cannot spot patterns, such as five people raising the same hedge, that should go on an agenda. When a councillor stands down, their correspondence about council matters goes with them. And if the council ever needs to find what it was told and when, for a complaint or an information request, it cannot do so reliably.
How your council handles councillors' email and records is a matter for your own policies and advisers. The tool below simply makes the policy practical.
A shared enquiry log with one address
- One enquiries address, such as enquiries@ your council's domain, that everyone uses. Councillors forward anything they receive to it, which takes a few seconds on a phone.
- A contact form on the website feeds the same log.
- Each enquiry becomes a record with the resident's details, the subject, the date and who it came through.
- Enquiries are categorised, by rules or with help from an AI model, into topics such as highways, open spaces, planning or allotments, and similar enquiries are grouped.
- The clerk assigns each one: reply directly, pass to a councillor, route to another body, or add to an agenda. Councillors assigned an enquiry get an email with the history and can reply from it.
- Replies sent from the log are stored with the enquiry, so the full conversation stays with the council.
- A monthly summary of topics and open enquiries is produced for councillors.
- Residents get a consistent acknowledgement.
- Councillors see what has already been said before replying.
- The record belongs to the council, not an individual inbox.
How it works in practice
A resident emails Councillor Patel about the hedge. She forwards it to the enquiries address from her phone. It is logged, grouped with two earlier hedge reports, and the clerk sends one reply to all three residents explaining that the footpath is the highway authority's and the report has been passed on. At the next meeting, the summary shows the hedge as a recurring topic.
When a councillor leaves, nothing leaves with them.
Setting it up is mostly agreeing the habit. We create the address, the categories and the reply templates with the clerk, then walk councillors through forwarding an email and replying from an assigned enquiry, which is usually all they need. Older enquiries sitting in the clerk's inbox can be brought in so the log starts with the current open issues rather than empty. Social media messages can be added by forwarding a screenshot or copying the text into a short form, so they stop being the one channel nobody records.
Do you recognise this?
- Residents contact councillors directly and the clerk does not hear.
- Councillors use personal email accounts for council business.
- Residents get different answers from different councillors.
- You cannot say how many people raised a particular issue.
- Correspondence leaves with councillors who stand down.