About your posts:

1. Contributions must be civil, tasteful and appropriate.
   
2. No disruptive, offensive or abusive behaviour: contributions must be constructive and polite, not mean-spirited or contributed with the intention of causing trouble.
3. No unlawful or objectionable content: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, postings which may incite religious hatred, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.
4. Breaking the law - This includes libel, condoning illegal activity and contempt of court (comments which might affect the outcome of an approaching court case). You may post a small amount of third party material, but please help us to avoid breaching copyright by naming its author and publication. We are unable to investigate all third party material, so where possible, please provide a link instead.
5. If you use multiple logins for the purpose of disrupting or annoying other users you may have action taken against your accounts.
6. Be patient: users of all ages and abilities may be taking part in the relevant Chat Sandwell forum.
7. No spamming or off-topic material: we don't allow the submission of the same or very similar contributions many times. Please don't re-submit your contribution to more than one discussion, or contribute off-topic material in subject-specific areas.
8. No advertising.
9. Postings should not be in a language other than English.
10. No impersonation.
11. No inappropriate (e.g. vulgar, offensive etc) user names, email addresses or domains.
    
12. You may refer to specific URLs (web site addresses) with the exception of online blogs, providing they are relevant to the topic and the website content is appropriate.
    

If a topic or category has not been posted to for a period of 1 month, we reserve the right to delete any topics, categories and postings to ensure that the forum is kept valid, up-to-date and most importantly manageable.

The maximum life span of a topic/category will be 3 months unless the topic/category is out to consultation, in which case the topic/category will remain on Chat Sandwell for the full consultation period.

Chat Sandwell is a tool for citizens to use to talk to each other about general issues relating to Sandwell Council and the borough and not a place to raise specific complaints. Any comments/compliments/complaints that citizens have, should be made directly to Customer Services.

Safety:

We advise that you never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example: telephone number, home address), and please do not include postal addresses of any kind.

About the law:

• You may not submit any defamatory or illegal material of any nature on Chat Sandwell. This includes text, graphics, video, programs or audio.
• Contributing material with the intention of committing or promoting an illegal act is strictly prohibited.
• You agree to only submit materials, which are your own original work. You must not violate, plagiarise, or infringe the rights of third parties including copyright, trade-mark, trade secrets, privacy, publicity, personal or proprietary rights.
  

The views expressed in sandwell.gov.uk Chat Sandwell are those of members of the public and are not necessarily those of the Council.

If you're under 16:

• Please get a parent or guardian's permission before taking part in any Chat Sandwell discussion.
• Never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example, telephone number, home address).
  

Indemnification:

You agree to indemnify Sandwell Council against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damage, or expenses (including legal fees) asserted by any third party due to or arising from or in connection with your forum comments.

Data Protection:

Sandwell Council complies with the Data Protection Act 1998.

If you breach these Terms of Use:

If you fail to abide by these Forum Rules when taking part in a Chat Sandwell discussion, you will be sent an email, which informs you why your contribution has been rejected.

This action may include your relevant account or accounts being placed into temporary or permanent suspension of your ability to participate in any or all of Chat Sandwell areas.

If you post or send offensive or inappropriate content anywhere on or to Chat Sandwell or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on sandwell.gov.uk, and Sandwell Council considers such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, Sandwell Council may use whatever information that is available to it about you to stop any further such infringements. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school or email provider about the infringement/s.

Sandwell Council reserves the right to delete any contribution, or take action against any account, at any time, for any reason.

Revisions

We may at any time revise these terms and conditions without notice. Please check regularly. Continued use of sandwell.gov.uk, after a change has been made is your acceptance of the change.