Ashfield council reassures residents ‘no emails lost’ after complaint at full inbox

On September 11, the Chad reported that Kirkby in Ashfield residents were angry that emailed objections to a 214 house development at Coxmoor were ‘bouncing back’ following a glitch with Ashfield District Council’s IT system.

At the time, the council apologised, saying it was “aware of the issue which was detected by its monitoring systems.”

Then, Councillor Matthew Relf, portfolio holder for place, planning and regeneration had said: "We rapidly made the necessary adjustments to resolve the issue” and “we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused but would like to reassure residents that all comments will be considered.” Residents could resubmit their comments if they had “any concerns.”

Now, Coxmoor campaigner Sarah Cadwallader said the main inbox for the Ashfield council planning department was having problems, saying it was “full and bouncing back.”

Sarah said: “Last time the staff knew nothing about the problem until I demanded to know what was happening. Councillor Relf seemed to believe that they had some sort of system for picking this up, they obviously haven't as it's happened again. The council is asleep at the wheel and will make things up to cover it up. Ashfield deserves better.”

In a new statement to the Chad, Councillor Matthew Relf, cabinet member for planning and rRegeneration has reassured residents that no emails have been lost and urged anyone who has had problems to contact the council so it can investigate.

Coun Relf said: “When emails come into the planning department they are automatically sent to eight different recipients. When this problem occurred previously it was one of these recipients that had an inbox that was approaching full that generated the response to the sender.

"Regardless, all eight recipients received the email and the resident’s concerns were logged. No emails were lost. The automated monitoring systems also highlighted to the IT department the full inbox and this was cleared down and the mailbox size increased.

“If a resident has received a similar message again then I’m more than happy for us to investigate if they get in contact with us directly with details of when this occurred. I can assure residents their email will have been received and actioned upon."