An e-Petition is a petition which collects signatures online. This allows petitions and supporting information to be made available to a potentially much wider audience than a traditional paper based petition.

The purpose of the RBWM e-petition service is to enable as many residents of the borough to make their views known to the council. All petitions will be accepted and published on this website, providing they meet the criteria below.

Petitioners may freely disagree with The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead or call for changes of policy. There will be no attempt to exclude critical views and decisions to accept or reject will not be made on a party political basis. However, to protect this service from abuse, petitions must satisfy some basic conditions.

Submitting a petition

To start a petition, a lead petitioner must use the online form to provide:
• the title or subject of the petition; • a clear and concise statement covering the subject of the petition. It should state what action the petitioner wishes The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to take. The petition will be returned to the lead petitioner to edit if it is unclear what action is being sought; • the petition author's address within the borough (this will not be placed on the website); • the name of an organisation represented by the lead petitioner (if relevant) • a duration for the petition (maximum 6 months).

The information in a petition must be submitted in good faith. In order for the petition to be accepted, it must not include:
• Party political material. Please note, this does not mean it is not permissible to petition on controversial issues. For example, this party political petition would not be permitted: "We petition The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to change the Labour executive's policy on education", but this non-party political version would be: "We petition The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to change their policy on education". • potentially libellous, false, or defamatory statements; • information which may be protected by an injunction or court order (for example, the identities of children in custody disputes); • material which is potentially confidential, commercially sensitive, or which may cause personal distress or loss; • any commercial endorsement, promotion of any product, service or publication; • the names of individual officials of public bodies, unless they are part of the senior management of those organisations; • the names of family members of elected representatives or officials of public bodies; • the names of individuals, or information where they may be identified, in relation to criminal accusations; • language which is offensive, intemperate, or provocative. This not only includes obvious swear words and insults, but any language to which people reading it could reasonably take offence.

Rejected petitions

We reserve the right to reject:
• petitions that are similar to and/or overlap with an existing live petition or petitions or are substantially similar to one hosted on the website within the last 6 months unless significant new information has been received • petitions which do not relate to something which is the responsibility of the authority, or over which the authority has some influence • petitions that relate to something which has already been dealt with by the Council or another appropriate body or are in the process of being so dealt with. • petitions that don't actually request any action or call upon The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to "recognise" or "acknowledge" something, as they do not clearly call for a recognisable action. • wording that is impossible to understand; please don't use 'shouting' capital letters excessively as they can make petitions fall foul of this criterion. • statements that amount to advertisements; • petitions which are considered rude, offensive, defamatory, scurrilous, time-wasting or otherwise inappropriate • issues for which an e-petition is not the appropriate channel (for example, correspondence about a personal issue, including petitions on individual legal cases. • petitions that raise issues of competence or misconduct of an officer. Such issues will be referred to the Chief Executive (or to the Head of Human Resources in respect of the Chief Executive) and will be considered under the authority’s Disciplinary Procedures, and not under this petitions procedure • petitions which raise issues of possible Councillor misconduct will be taken as complaints arising under the Local Government Act 2000 as amended by the Localism Act 2011 and will be reported to the Monitoring Officer, rather than considered under the council’s petition procedure. • Freedom of Information requests. This is not the right channel for FOI requests; information about the appropriate procedure can be found at: Freedom of Information

We will strive to ensure that petitions that do not meet our criteria are not accepted, but where a petition is accepted which contains misleading information we reserve the right to suspend the petition, post an interim response to highlight this point to anyone visiting to sign the the petition, or withdraw the petition at a later date.

Select an earlier date range below to find completed e-Petitions and responses from the Council