Press Office Twitter policy
This page explains how the DWP Press Office uses Twitter, a popular micro‑blogging service.
Twitter – @dwppressoffice
Follow DWP Press Office on Twitter
The @dwppressofficeTwitter account is managed by the Press Office in the Department for Work and Pensions.
If you follow this account, you can expect regular tweets covering some or all of the following:
- news stories, press releases and useful facts and figures
- consultations and other publications
- speeches, visits, media interviews and statements by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and our ministers
- retweets of notable announcements by UK Government Departments, other organisations of relevance to the DWP and interesting stories, comments or opinion which we think will be of interest to our followers.
We do not use any automation (such as tools which generate tweets from RSS feeds) to post content on Twitter.
Following @dwppressoffice
If you follow @dwppressoffice we will not automatically follow you back. We may follow organisations of relevance to DWP, and may follow individuals where appropriate. We reserve the right to unfollow accounts we believe are malicious or spam. Our following a Twitter account does not imply endorsement of any kind by the DWP.
Hashtags
We may refer to existing hashtags that are in common use. This is in order to categorise messages for ease of reference. It does not imply endorsement of any kind.
@messages and direct messages
We will review @messages during office hours, Monday to Friday (not including public holidays). We will not be able to reply to them directly but that does not mean we aren’t listening to you. Where possible we will try to make sure the feedback we're getting from you gets to the appropriate people within the DWP.
However, the DWP Press Office Twitter channel is not intended as a means to investigate, discuss or comment upon individual benefit enquiries.
The best way to get in touch with the DWP officially is via the contact us page.
Our Twitter stream is not intended to be used by the media to contact us. If you are a member of the media and have an enquiry, you should contact the DWP Press Office directly on 0203 267 5144
We cannot engage on issues of party politics.
Availability
We will update and monitor @dwppressoffice during office hours, Monday to Friday (not including public holidays). We may occasionally tweet during out of office hours. Twitter may occasionally be unavailable and we accept no responsibility for lack of service due to Twitter downtime.
Confidentiality and security
We strongly recommend that you do not discuss any personal or financial details on Twitter, or give out any personal information. We cannot respond to individual queries over Twitter. We cannot accept tweets as notification of any change in circumstances that may impact a benefit claim. We will never ask for any personal details to be shared over Twitter.
Twitter and Freedom of Information
For Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, the best way to submit your request is to email it directly to the DWP’s central FOI team:
