Welcome to the LFB Carers Connect Forum Rules and Forum Conditions (“Forum Rules and Conditions”) for London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (“the Authority”), responsible for running the London Fire Brigade (“LFB”). The Forum is to provide a place for people to come together to share experiences, advice and information. The Forum Rules and Conditions have been devised to help ensure that the Forum is a friendly and constructive place for discussion and to protect users.
You must comply with the Forum Rules and Conditions below when using the Forum and in relation to the content of any contributions you may post to the Forum.
LFB reserves the right to change the Forum Rules and Conditions at any time at our sole discretion. You should check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we make and ensure that you are aware of and are complying with the current version as they are legally binding on you. Use of the website/forum following changes shall indicate your acceptance of the new Forum Rule and Conditions. For the purposes of the Forum Rules and Conditions and Terms of Use “we”, “our” and “us” refers to the Authority/LFB and any reference to “you” or “your” means you the user.
Please read the Forum Rules and Condition, Terms and Conditions of our website and Privacy Policy. Submission of the registration form and use of the website/forum signifies that you accept and agree to be bound by these.
Each registration is for a single Authority employee only. We do not permit you to share your user name and password with any other person or with multiple users on a network. Responsibility for the security of any passwords issued rests with you.
1. Forum rules
- Respect other forum members
When using the LFB Carers Connect Forum, you must respect the views and beliefs of other users. Caring can be an emotional and sensitive subject, and a matter people feel strongly about. When using the forum you do so in your capacity as an Authority employee and are required to comply with the Authority’s IT Acceptable Use Policy.
- Be fair
We encourage open discussions and debates, but you must share your thoughts politely and constructively. You must respect other users thoughts, views and opinions even if you do not share them yourself. Please do not be dismissive of other’s concerns. Threatening language or comments made towards other users, moderators or other Authority employees will not be accepted and could result in further action being taken against you including your account being suspended or removed.
- Help each other
Most answers on forums come from fellow support forum members like you. The Authority does not guarantee that every post will be read or will receive a response. If you have a specific query which has not been responded to, you could perhaps speak to your line manager, Area HR Advisor or the HR Helpdesk. More general queries can be emailed to us at www,carers@london-fire.gov.uk.
- Take care when providing advice
Users may be inclined to offer advice whilst using the forum. The Authority takes no responsibility for the advice given or taken by users which may subsequently be deemed bad or unsuitable advice. Users must think before following any advice as anything that results from this is the users responsibility. If you are recommending other sites, organisations (only include suitable URLs in your contributions) or services – or are receiving recommendations, do take them as personal recommendations. You should check these out yourselves. You must not post any confidential, personal or sensitive personal information about yourself or any other person for example any details of the name, address, telephone, mobile or fax number, e-mail address or any other personal data. And it’s a big ‘Net out there – follow links at your own risk.
- Give your topics meaningful subject headings!
Avoid: “read this”, “help”, or “question” — these are too general, people who might be able to help you may not open your topic so be specific. Please read through the forum before posting as you may find there is already a discussion on your chosen subject.
2. Infringement of copyright or other intellectual property rights
Contributions to the forum must not contain any text or materials that risk infringing the copyright or any other intellectual property rights owned by another person.
The law of copyright protects the rights of the copyright owner against a third party who seeks to take the owner’s work and pass it off as their own. You should be aware that if your contribution infringes the copyright of a third party, that third party could take court action against you.
You will be solely responsible for ensuring that your contributions do not infringe the copyright or other intellectual property rights of a third party, however some practical steps that you could take to minimise the risk of a contribution infringing copyright include the following:
- You should not paste large sections of text from a third party document, website or other source onto the forum.
- Any quotes or text you paste into a contribution should include attribution of that quote or statement to the relevant author.
- If you wish to refer to an external source, you should include a link to the relevant website, subject to complying with the rules below in relation to links to external websites.
3. Breach of laws or legal duties
You must ensure that the content of your contributions do not breach, or risk being in breach of, anyUKlaw or any other legal duty or obligation owed by you
In particular, you must ensure that your contributions do not:
- Breach any contractual duty or a duty of confidence that you owe to another person or organization.
4. Unsuitable website links
- You must ensure that your contributions do not contain links to any websites or webpages (outside of our site) that are not working or that are inconsistent with the spirit and purpose of the Forum and/or the House Rules.
In particular, you must not include links to any websites or webpages that:
- Market, advertise, sell or promote the products or services of you or any other person or organization.
- Breach or risk breaching anyUKlaw.
- Condone, encourage or describe how to commit any unlawful acts.
- Breaches the copyright or other legal rights of any person (or encourages persons to do so).
- Contain any offensive or immoral content, for example pornography or other sexually explicit material, depictions or descriptions of gratuitous violence, discriminatory material and other offensive materials.
- Present any security, safety or access issues, for example links to subscription sites, pages which initiate a download or launch cascading sites, which require obscure software or prior registration in order to access, are age-restricted and/or are in a foreign language with no English language version available.
You should be aware that the inclusion of a website or webpage link in any contribution does not in any way imply endorsement by the Authority or make any representations about the content or any products or services available on such websites or any results which may be obtained by using them. The Authority is not associated with the operators or administrators of such websites. If you access such websites or establish a link to such websites you do so at your own risk and without our permission.
5. Moderation
You should be aware that the Forum is moderated by members of the HRD Carers team. The purpose of moderation is to ensure that users comply with the Forum Rules and Conditions. Content posted by users will only be reviewed by this team for the above purpose and will not be passed to other LFB staff, sections or departments unless there are exceptional circumstances e.g. where the forum rules have been breached. We will use our reasonable endeavours to check every contribution submitted to the Forum as soon as is reasonably practicable to ensure compliance with the Forum Rules and Conditions. If a contribution is submitted by you outside of Forum Working Days (being 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday – excluding bank and public holidays), the contribution will not be checked before the next Forum Working Day.
Although the forum is moderated, we are under no obligation to you or any other person to oversee, monitor or moderate the forum, contributions or any other service we provide on our site, and we may stop moderating the forum and/or contributions at any time. We reserve the right to remove, or to disable access to the forumof any user who fails to comply with the Forum Rule and Conditions
6. Reporting a post
If you are aware that someone is being offensive, or breaking the Forum Rules and Conditions you can contact us at www.carers@london-fire.gov.uk. We will try to deal with these messages as quickly as possible.
7. Compliance with the Forum Rules and Conditions
All users must be aware that failure to comply with any of the Forum Rules and Conditions may result in the following action being taken;
- your contribution being removed.
- your account being suspended or cancelled
- disciplinary or legal action being taken.
- minor offences may result in a simple off-board warning.
- for repeated failure to comply or if deemed necessary a stronger official warning may be issued.
- a temporary ban being imposed which may be of progressively longer durations dependent on the type of offence.
All contributions made to the Forum must:
- Be accurate (where any facts are stated).
- Be genuinely held (where any opinions are stated).
- Comply with the law applicable in theUK.
- Be within the scope of the subject under discussion.
- Be in English to allow all users to understand contributions and also allow the Authority to moderate contributions and deal with any complaints.
The Authority reserves the right to moderate contributions to the forum and may take action if it deems necessary.
As a condition of your access to the Forum and use of this Forum, you must not post contributions that:
- disrupt, abuse, threaten, provoke, disrespect, attack, defame, upset, embarrass or offend others
- include any swear words (including abbreviations or alternative spelling)
- contain any statements that are libelous, vulgar, obscene, blasphemous, promote or condone any form of discrimination, including discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age, liable to incite racial hatred.
- Bully another user by deliberate, repeated and hostile behaviour intended to undermine, humiliate or belittle.could constitute or encourage conduct that would be considered a criminal offence, civil liability, or otherwise violate any law. impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person. In particular, contributions must not give the impression that the contribution emanates from the Authority.
- Describe or encourage activities which could endanger the safety or well-being of others.
- cause or permit ‘spamming’ of the forum, (the submission of the same or very similar contributions a number of times).
- Disrupt or prejudice any other persons use or enjoyment of the forum
- Make multiple contributions for any purpose that is inconsistent with the spirit of the forum
- Make contributions in any manner that cause technical difficulties for the forum or otherwise disrupts the operation of the forum.
- contain any form of marketing, advertising, sales or promotion of any products or services offered by you or any other person or organisation.
- Are “flaming” or “trolling”, i.e. contain an angry and mean-spirited statement or a statement that is designed simply to provoke an argument.
- use your user name or any signature that is posted beneath your contributions to promote any other website, services, products or campaigns, or in any other way that is inconsistent with the terms or spirit of the Forum Rules and Conditions.
8. Disclaimer
Access to the forum is made available to you without responsibility on our part and no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, is or will be made or given by us in relation to the functionality, performance, accuracy or completeness of the forum and/or any data and/or information accessed via the forum.
Where the forum or any contribution contains any links to external websites, we are not responsible for the contents of or any changes to any such linked site. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by us of the relevant site. The Authority is not responsible and assumes no legal liability for the accuracy of the contents or any other aspect of any external site to which a link or other reference has been provided via the Forum.
Neither the Authority nor its employees or agents shall be liable for any loss, damage or expense arising out of any access to and/or use of the forum or any site linked to it including, without limitation, any direct loss, any loss of profit, any special loss, any indirect loss, any incidental loss and/or any consequential loss.
Furthermore, no warranty is given by us that the forum shall be available on an uninterrupted or error free basis, and no liability is accepted by us in respect of any losses or damages arising out of such unavailability.
