Go to e-petitions
The purpose of the e-petition service is to enable as many
people as possible to make their views known. All e-petitions will
be accepted and published on this website, providing they meet the
criteria below.
Petitioners may freely disagree with Suffolk Coastal District
Council or call for changes of policy. There will be no attempt to
exclude critical views. Decisions to accept or reject an e-petition
will be made in accordance with the
Council's petitions scheme.
However, to protect this service from abuse, e-petitions must
satisfy some basic conditions.
To submit an e-petition, you must use the online form to
provide:
- the title or subject of the e-petition;
- a clear and concise statement covering the subject of the
e-petition (it should state what action the petitioner wishes
Suffolk Coastal District Council to take - the e-petition will be
returned to you to edit if it is unclear what action is being
sought);
- the e-petition author's contact address (this will not be
placed on the website);
- a duration for the e-petition.
E-petition guidelines
The information in an e-petition must be submitted in good
faith. We reserve the right to reject:
- e-petitions which ask for things outside the remit or powers of
the Council;
- statements that don't actually request that any steps be
taken;
- wording that is vexatious, abusive or otherwise
inappropriate;
- e-petitions about planning, licensing, or other matters where
there is an existing right of appeal;
- Freedom of Information (FOI) requests - this is not the
right channel for FOI requests, information about the appropriate
procedure is available on our
Freedom of Information page.
E-petitions that do not follow these guidelines cannot be
accepted. In these cases, you will be informed in writing of the
reasons your e-petition has been refused. If this happens, we will
give you the option of altering and resubmitting the e-petition so
it can be accepted.
If you decide not to resubmit your e-petition, or if the second
one is also rejected, we will list your e-petition and the reasons
for not accepting it on this website. We will publish the full text
of your e-petition, unless the content is illegal or offensive.
We cannot accept e-petitions which call upon the Council to
'recognise' or 'acknowledge' something, as they do not clearly call
for a recognisable action.
We will strive to ensure that e-petitions that do not meet our
criteria are not accepted, but where a e-petition is accepted which
contains misleading information we reserve the right to post an
interim response to highlight this point to anyone visiting to sign
the e-petition.
What happens next
Once accepted, e-petitions will be made available on this
website for people to sign. Anyone signing the e-petition must
provide their name, address and a verifiable email address.
Please note that for a signature on a petition to count,
the person signing it must either live, work or study in the
Suffolk Coastal district.
No personal details other than their name will be published on
the site. Information about any individual will not be used for any
other purpose than in relation to the e-petition. You can read more
on this in our
e-petitions privacy policy.
It will usually take up to five working days from the time an
e-petition proposal is received for it to appear on the website,
although during busy periods it may take longer. For more
information on the process, read our
step-by-step guide.
Your e-petition will be available on this website until the
specified closing date. If, however, during this time it becomes
clear that your e-petition is not being run in accordance with the
terms, we reserve the right to withdraw it. If this happens, we
will contact you first to allow you to address the concerns we
raise and we will only remove the e-petition as a last resort.
Our response to your e-petition
Our response will depend on what the petition asks for and how
many people have signed it. How we will respond to petitions is
set out in our petitions scheme. When we
respond, our response will be emailed to everyone who has signed
the e-petition. Responses to any
completed e-petitions will also be available to
view on this website.
Go to
e-petitions