Bucks Council Leader blocks local disability group on twitter

Councillor Martin Tett blocked the local group over the weekend.

Author: Scarlett Bawden-GaulPublished 2nd Nov 2020

The Buckinghamshire group say they are disappointed in the move.

Over the weekend Buckinghamshire Disability Service discovered that Martin Tett, leader of the county's council has blocked them on twitter.

Andrew Clark, Chair of Trustee's for BuDS:

"We are disability service, we are not abusive and we are not even disrespectful.

"We have had disagreements though, we thought Cllr Tett should have stopped encouraging people to go to pubs and restaurants sooner than he did. We thought some of his comments about our new #Fair4All card scheme that we are launching in Aylesbury were unjustified.

"But, those were disagreements not twitter wars and to be honest you should be able to debate these sorts of issues."

Over the weekend Cllr Tett also called someone 'delusional' over their comments on his salary.

Andrew says although there are ways to view the Council leaders feed, the hope is he reverses this decision:

"We would certainly like him to reverse the decision but we wont craw over it.

"We are just entering another lockdown, for the leader of the council to basically say to the only pan-disability charity in Buckinghamshire 'I don't want to talk to you, I'm not going to talk to you.' is just irresponsible.

"We really are all in the pandemic together but we represent the disabled people in Buckinghamshire and we are on the front line of the pandemic."

A comment from Bucks Council reads:

"Martin Tett’s Twitter account is a personal one and not a council account. This is made clear in his profile. It is his decision as to whom he allows access to his Tweets. The council therefore cannot comment on this matter.”

Cllr Tett's bio on the site read "Conservative. Views strictly my own not those of Buckinghamshire Council. RTs are not necessarily an endorsement".

However, several tweets refer to Buckinghamshire Council as 'we', including retweets from the official Buck Council account.