SOUTH Hams Council are calling the ‘#OurDay’ event a ‘great success’ after taking to Twitter to share their daily activities.

Twitter is a social media website that allows users to publicly share updates, similar to Facebook, but restricted to 140 characters and called ‘tweets’. As with other social media platforms, adding a ‘hashtag’ to posts, such as #OurDay, groups them together, allowing users to search for posts about a specific subject.

Last Wednesday, November 18, South Hams District Council joined hundreds of other authorities around the country that spent the day tweeting and retweeting what they were up to, using the hashtag #OurDay, to give residents a glimpse into the often unseen world of council officers.

From recycling waste, keeping streets clean, investigating noise pollution, issuing planning notices to answering questions about council tax, these are just some of the jobs that South Hams District Council employees do every day of the year.

Leader of South Hams District Council, Cllr. John Tucker, said: ‘Our officers work incredibly hard all year round. #OurDay is a great reminder to us all, of the people behind the services and the type of work they do.

‘This year we were thrilled by the engagement of staff and elected members, who were following South Hams tweets and sharing their daily activities with us, thank you everyone who retweeted our posts.’

Nationwide, there were over 36,000 tweets for #OurDay over a 24 hour period. South Hams District Council started the day at 7am, joining a social media ‘thunderclap’, which is a single digital message that is mass-shared, flash mob-style, for maximum impact.

From then on, they asked staff and councillors to contribute throughout the day, posting photographs and information about where they were and what they were doing.

This included introducing a new bird of prey to deter scavenging seagulls at their waste transfer station, attending a planning meeting with council leaders, taking over 950 calls in the Customer Contact Centre and hosting a meeting with Unison.

The day also posed an opportunity to remind residents of some the of South Hams District Council’s other work this year: they have 19 beaches with blue flags, handled over 1,500 planning applications and approved over 900 new homes, they have introduced 15 new customer service officers who are based in the community, put up over 700 planning notices and carried out over 24,800 inspections at assets that are owned by the council.

#OurDay dramatically increased the social media activity for the council, increasing their potential audience on twitter to over 17,000 thanks to, likes, retweets and shares, compared to 2,000 on an average day.

If you would like to find out more about how they can help you, then follow them on social media: Twitter: @SouthHams_DC or Facebook: South Hams District Council.