Blackburn with Darwen Council s Standards Committee decided it was needed to avoid mistakes by elected members. Two former Labour councillors are currently sitting as Independents following complaints about their use of social media - Blackburn South-East ward s Cllr Andy Kay and Billinge and Beardwood s Cllr Tasleem Fazal. The committee decided to set up a briefing session for councillors on the issue. Chair Cllr Saima Afzal said previous social media training had failed to cover the whole issue of perceptions, context, equality, making comments online, use of Twitter as members and how we manage that dialogue in the public domain because it is a new arena.