Hadleigh mayor Frank Minns has apologised to a town resident after she was treated badly by council staff.

Former councillor Angela Wiltshire used the public speaking session of last Thursday's Hadleigh town council monthly meeting to complain about how a request for information was dealt with, and the subsequent 'curt' replies to emails, had been rudely dealt with

After putting forward the specifics, including times deaths and replies, Ms Wiltshire asked: "Does the council think that this is an appropriate way to interact with a routine request for information from a member of the public?"

The mayor looked into the matter personally and her complaint was discussed at a staff meeting, that included the £48k a year town centre manager Cheryl Tye and £25k a year town clerk Wendy Brame , who had failed to respond satisfactory to the emails.

Cllr Minns said: "I have apologised for the somewhat curt way in which her enquiry was handled. She has now received a copy of the recording she asked for.

"I stressed to the staff in general at yesterday's team meeting the need to be unfailingly polite to any enquiry and to answer promptly, and I believe that I have resolved this matter. "

Ms Wiltshire has accepted the apology and added: "I have received a courteous and helpful response from the mayor and I have twice been sent a link to the meeting and received an apology from the Town Clerk.

"If it had been the first time that this had happened to me, I would have put it down to a simple oversight, taken the staff at their word and moved on, and in fact that is what I did do the first time. I'm happy to have received some recognition that it was not an appropriate way to interact with a member of the public with a routine enquiry."

Mrs Wiltshire said at last week's meeting how she had written to both the Mrs Brame and Mrs Tye, town clerk and town centre manager respectively, at the beginning of July requesting a copy of the recording of the Council Matters meeting of 1July.

Ms Wiltshire read out her grievance and said: "I received an out of office notice from the Clerk's email address, and even though I had copied the original email to the Town Council Manager, I sent a further email to her later that morning, requesting the same thing.

"I must just say here that the reason I did this was because I had had a previous request for a recording ignored long enough for the recording to have been deleted, so I was keen to avoid that happening with this request.

"On 6.7.2021 I emailed the TCM and TC again asking if they had had a chance to look at my email and if they could forward the recording at their earliest convenience as I had received no reply and not even an acknowledgment of my request.

"Over a week later on 14.7.2021 yesterday, having still received no response from either the TCM, nor the TC, I emailed again asking for my request to be treated as an FOIA request. This morning I received an email from the TCM telling me that 'unfortunately' my request was 'invalid' quoting something which contradicts the government's website on the subject.

"Good morning

Unfortunately your request under the Freedom of Information is invalid

Valid under the FOI Act - To be valid, it must be made in writing, and include the name and address of the person requesting the information"

"No suggestion about how to make it valid, no explanation and no apology for not replying to my emails for over 10 days, but apparently keen to point out my error. I pointed out that her response was contrary to government guidance. It is also contrary to the Town Council's own out of date FOI Publication scheme policy on the website. I have since received an email:

No greeting