Questions put to your Councillor

It is unreasonable to expect your Councillor to be able to personally answer all questions asked of him/her as many of them require professional inputs of a technical nature.

So it is quite appropriate for your Councillor to refer many questions to the Officer who is responsible for that particular subject.

You should expect that your councillor will communicate with you and tell your question has been forwarded and who it has been forwarded to. It is also reasonable to ask your Councillor (being as the question was posed to her/him) to follow up if you do not receive an answer within 12 working days from when it was forwarded (this is a shire policy for Shire Officers responses but, unfortunately, not for responses from out elected officials).

If you are not happy with the response from the Officer then you need to solicit the support of your Councillor to get it “fixed”. This may come in many types of remedy including a face-to-face meeting with the Officer and your Councillor to work it out.

If you do not get the support you feel you should get you can contact the Mayor and, as always in the last resort, if you are not happy with the response you get from your elected official do everything in your power to make sure the current Councillor is not re-elected.

As always make sure you have a documented time line of what happened and when and any document references. In dealing with large bureaucratic organizations (be it Government or not) documented time lines of what happened and when is essential.