Dear Woking co-ord/deputy

I sent an email to you all not long ago warning that the Police were going to contact all you co-ords/deputies to ask if you were willing to join a WhatsApp Broadcast group. They have started this process. If you have received an email from the Police, especially from Mital Patel, could I ask that you reply, even if it is to say “no thank you”. Please reply to the email (or the phone call) and do not ask me to send the acceptance on your behalf as I am unable to forward that onto the Police at the moment due to a bug in the Alert system. You can always email the Inspector direct with acceptance if you have deleted the original email>> Edward.Lyons@surrey.police.uk
Many thanks to those who have already replied - there is no need to send another email as a result of receiving this one. 

As a reminder, below are the details of what Inspector Lyons plans to do.

Regards
Martin Stilwell
Chair, Woking NhW

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Our Inspector Ed Lyons is setting up a contact group of all co-ordinators in Woking so that he can broadcast urgent communications to us rather than wait for an Alert email go out, or to mention it in the weekly crime report - often too late to “catch the moment”.
The communication will go out via WhatsApp Broadcast. It will be a one-way communication.

This is an excellent idea and a first for Surrey. But it does, of course, require your approval to agree to receive these messages. The Police will be contacting co-ordinators via phone or email and you can accept of decline the request, but the Police will only add you to the Broadcast group if you accept - the default is to reject the request to join.

Of course, if you do not use WhatsApp then you will not be able to take part, and that's fine.
Hopefully the contact from the Police will be such that you have no doubt it is from them. If via email it will have come from an officer with an email address ending in “…@Surrey.Police.uk”. If by phone they will need to assure you that they are the Police.

This is an excellent initiative by Insp Lyons. His expectation is that there will typically be just one WhatsApp message per week, but it will be a useful and/or important one.