A RISE in complaints about councillor conduct on social media should prompt a policy re-think, leading members have said.

The calls for clarity over the "grey area" of when politicians are acting in a private capacity come after a spate of issues around election time.

A town hall committee heard legal officers had received seven complaints relating to alleged bullying or abuse on social media in the last six months.

This compares to just one such complaint in the previous two years.

Brendan Whitworth, Wigan Council’s monitoring officer, suggested the authority’s social media policy for elected members may need updating.

“Some of it focused around the election when the inter-party exchanges perhaps crossed the line,” he said.

Calls for further training were voiced by a former leader of the local authority and the current leader of the opposition.

Cllr Michael Winstanley, who leads the Conservative opposition group, told colleagues: “The interesting one is the social media aspect, we’re all touched by it to a greater or lesser extent depending on how much we interact with social media in our respective roles.

“It will be worthwhile revisiting the policy for members, since it was last redrafted more members are now on social media in one form or another.

“Perhaps we should do a session on what would fall foul of the code of conduct and what wouldn’t.

“It is quite a grey area, you can quite easily step over the mark and whether you’re acting in your capacity as a member or not, sometimes with different accounts it’s hard to determine whether you’re in that position or not.”

The figures were detailed in a report tabled for a meeting of the audit, governance and standards committee.

It revealed 23 complaints had been received since January 2016, 18 of which related to allegations an elected member had displayed bullying or abusive behaviour.

One alleged a failure to register a pecuniary interest and four claimed members had brought the council into disrepute.

Of the bullying or abusive behaviour complaints, nine were said to be "in person", eight on social media and three through e-mails.

Earlier this year the committee heard the number of complaints has reduced in the last five years but members had requested a breakdown of what sections of the code of conduct had been breached to help them recommend training to address any trends.

Lord Smith, who stepped down as leader of the ruling Labour group earlier this year, agreed with Coun Winstanley that it was an issue that needed "looking at".

He said members should be treated as acting in an official capacity in some instances even if they were using personal accounts on social media.

He told the meeting: “If someone is a councillor, even though it is not on a council (account), if they are abusing a member or an officer, presumably they can’t claim they’re acting in a private capacity because they’re never not a member of the council.

“If you’re abusing whatever position you have to abuse somebody then they shouldn’t be able to claim that it wasn’t from a Wigan Metro account.”

Chairman of the committee, Cllr Charles Rigby, said: “Members should have the best advice they can get and if it’s changing then these refreshers will do some good.”