Leader of the Medway Labour Group, Cllr Vince Maple, has challenged Conservative controlled Medway Council over inappropriate and inconsistent use of its official twitter account.

Cllr Maple challenged the administration at a meeting of Medway’s full council last Thursday, January 22, pointing out that the @Medway_Council twitter feed, which has over 10,000 followers, had been used to live tweet from January’s cabinet the meeting and directly quote Conservative cabinet members.

The meeting was told that the twitter feed would not be used during Thursday’s full council - which Cllr Maple says also shows inconsistency.

“It is not appropriate to pick and choose which decision making council meetings this live tweeting takes place at,” he said in a later statement.

“To directly quote two Conservative Councillors at the cabinet meeting, but not even be active (during) the full council meeting when councillors from all parties are able to speak seems to be an inappropriate use of social media in this way.”

He pointed out that the Department of Communities and Local Government has already written to Medway Council about their magazine Medway Matters - over concerns that it is not complying with the Publicity Code.

“It now seems that they are using social media in an unbalanced way,” said Cllr Maple, “with less than 15 weeks until the local election I would urge the council to review its policy as regards official social media activity as a matter of urgency.”