A Swindon parish councillor has introduced a charter with the aim of making social media use fairer - and now he wants all local officials to get behind it.

Tom Butcher is a member of Stratton St Margaret Parish Council and is also running to be a Swindon Borough Councillor in the upcoming May elections. 

He believes that some Swindon community pages set up and managed by local councillors are problematic, including the Stratton St Margaret and South Marston page, which has over 5,000 members.  

"This is a wonderful group where members of the community can engage with one another, as well as their elected representatives, for the betterment of the community as a whole," he said.

"This group is proudly apolitical and has been kept so at the community's request. However, the group is still administered solely by Conservative councillors. This has resulted in the silencing of opposing voices, even when no politics is mentioned.

"This leads to large swathes of the community being under-represented."

Tom's proposed charter is to make sure page admins represent all of the community, to ensure that no member of the public should be excluded for simply voicing their opinion, that there should be no overtly political posts, and that admins should communicate transparently and positively with the community.

Borough councillor for the area, Russell Holland, started the Facebook page ten years ago. He is one of three admins for the page, alongside former Conservative borough councillor, Roger Smith, who lost his seat in 2022, and this year's Conservative election hopeful Matthew Vallender.

Coun Holland said: "Stratton and South Marston are wonderful communities and the group is a great way of having more engagement.

"We have seen friends and pets reunited, raised funds for good causes and had great discussions on a variety of topics.

"As a hard working local parish Councillor Matthew Vallender has been doing a great job helping run the group and support me on following up on local issues."

But the leader of the council, David Renard, has responded by accusing the Labour council candidate of "conflating their right to speak with their assumed right to a microphone".

He added: "Most people use community Facebook pages for exactly what they are, not for party political broadcasts by any party. In Stratton's case both Tom Butcher and Matt Vallender have been making posts throughout the year - mostly just sharing comms the Parish has been putting out - nothing wrong with this. 

"It is good to see Labour recognise the excellent work of Conservatives in building up local community groups on social media, and overt Party Political content is usually deleted irrespective of who posts it."

The candidates for Stratton St Margaret and South Marston are Tom Charles Butcher (Labour), Ella Constance March (Green Party), Chris Shephard (Liberal Democrat) and Matthew Thomas Vallender (Conservative).