Forestry England social media policy
This policy outlines how we use social media and the service you can expect to receive from us via our official social media channels.
The central social media accounts for Forestry England are listed below. We have numerous other official accounts, which may represent specific geographical regions or a specific area of expertise, and these will always explicitly state that they represent Forestry England.
How the sites work
If you are new to social media you may find it useful to look at the following help pages:
Activity
When?
We will be active on these social media accounts during the working week within normal office hours. Sometimes updates will be scheduled to post automatically outside of these hours to enable us to reach those not normally active on social media during the working day.
Some Facebook pages and Twitter feeds representing specific woodlands or forests may be active over weekends too but this cannot be guaranteed.
What?
If you follow one of our accounts, you can expect updates relating to our work improving, protecting and expanding England’s forests including advice for forest users on how to get the most out of their visits.
We will also provide information on issues that may affect you such as plant pests and diseases but note that this will only be in addition to information on our website which should remain the first point of reference.
From time-to-time we may also post content that is not directly related to our organisation but which we think you may find of interest. If at any time we share a third party's content, this does not represent endorsement of any kind.
Getting in touch
We are always happy for people to direct questions, queries and comments to us via our social media channels and we will always aim to respond to these as quickly as possible.
Please be aware that most communication on social media is public. If you do contact us through social media using private messaging on Facebook or direct messaging on Twitter, we will keep this correspondence private.
To report a suspected tree pest or disease, please use our Tree Alert form.
Make sure you get in touch with the right person when you contact us.
How we will respond
If you follow or like one of our social media accounts, we will not automatically follow you back. If we do follow you, this is not an endorsement of any kind.
In some cases we may have to consult a technical expert to ensure that we give you the right information or answer. In these cases the extra detail means that we may take longer to answer. Where this is the case we will keep you informed and in some circumstances we may have to ask you to contact us by phone or email to enable us to properly handle your enquiry.
Special circumstances when we may not be able to take your post into consideration include:
- official consultations, when we are only able to accept responses via our online consultation tool, email or post.
- if your query is not submitted in good faith, we may decide not to respond. This will include, but is not exclusive to, enquiries that contain:
- party political material.
- potentially false or misleading statements including any attempt to impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person.
- any commercial endorsement, promotion of any product, service or publication.
- language which is offensive, intemperate, or provocative. This not only includes swear words and insults, but any language to which people reading it could reasonably take offence.
- language other than English – unfortunately, we do not have the resource to respond to posts in other languages.
- topics unrelated to our work or remit.
- subjects or issues that we have previously responded to you about..
- or which originate from an account that has previously directed enquiries which have contained any of the above.
- Additionally, we may decide not to respond, or, if we think it is appropriate, block you from engaging with us and/or delete the post or request that the social media site removes the post, if the post:
- incites hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality or sexuality or other personal characteristic.
- contains malicious or offensive comments or constitutes a personal attack on a person’s character.
- contains personal details, such as private addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other online contact details whether or not they would breach privacy laws.
- breaks or may break the law – including libel or condoning illegal activity.
- includes trade secrets, may breach national security or break copyright restrictions.
For the rules associated with each of these social media channels, see:
We reserve the right to report breaches of these rules to the site owner.
Requests for information
We welcome requests made under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, the Environmental Information Regulations or the Data Protection Act. It is your right to submit requests for information, however it helps us to provide a prompt and full response if you can submit these using email. If you know which of our offices holds the information you seek, please get in touch with that office directly. For more information, see our 'requesting information' pages.
So we can provide a full response to your request you will need to provide your name and address (this can be an electronic address such as email). We would therefore advise that you refer to the guidance on submitting a request for information on our website.
Our staff on social media
Some of our staff and specialist teams use social media in a professional capacity to talk about their work at the Forestry Commission. These accounts are monitored and managed by the individuals named and as a result we cannot guarantee the same levels of service you can expect from our corporate accounts (named above).
Information shared by our staff on their personal social media accounts reflects the views of the individual and may not represent the views of Forestry England.