Social Media Guidance

The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s Social Media Policy

If you follow the PPO on Twitter or LinkedIn, you can expect posts covering some or all of the following:

  • Notifications and links for our new content (for example, news, press notices, publications, Learning Lessons Bulletins, information about our services, articles, and publicity materials)
  • Complaints and fatal incidents investigation statistics
  • Occasional reaction to news stories, articles and publications involving or relevant to the PPO
  • Invitations to complete stakeholder surveys
  • Occasional coverage of events
  • Recruitment opportunities

PPO has to remain independent

Use of our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts are bound by the Civil Service Code. We cannot engage on issues of party politics. Nor do we compromise our independence through bias towards or endorsement of any other organisation, inside or outside Government.

PPO Investigations

We cannot comment on individual complaints or fatal incident investigations via social media – open or past. If you have a specific enquiry, please go to our Contact Us page.

Following

We will not automatically follow you back. Being followed by us does not imply endorsement of any kind.

Hashtags and analytics

We may refer to existing hashtags that are in common use. It does not imply endorsement of any kind. We may use analytics to analyse our social media account for trends, insights and engagement. You may unfollow us at any stage.

Availability

We will update and monitor our social media accounts during office hours, Monday to Friday, occasionally updating and monitoring outside of these times. Twitter or LinkedIn may occasionally be unavailable, and we accept no responsibility for lack of service due to the platform’s downtime.

@messages and direct messages

We welcome feedback and ideas from all our followers. However, we are not able to reply individually to all the messages we receive.

We will review @messages and Direct Messages and try to make sure that any emerging themes or helpful suggestions are passed to the relevant people in the Department. Queries can be sent to us via email or telephone. Visit our Contact us page for more information.

Abusive and offensive behaviour

The PPO will not tolerate or engage with any abusive, offensive, or discriminatory behaviour directed towards staff over social media. Such behaviour may include using social media to gain personal information about staff or using social media to embarrass or harass staff.

We will also not tolerate defamatory, fraudulent, deceptive, or misleading comments, or comments that are flame-baiting.

As a first step, the PPO will not respond if we deem the behaviour unacceptable. If behaviour persists, we will escalate this to the PPO’s Senior Leaders. We may block accounts and threats may be reported to the social media platform and/ or the police.

Inaccurate claims

If the PPO is mentioned in any online content that features inaccuracies, then we may issue a correction statement.