As the person in the office who spends longest ensconced in council meetings, election time invariably brings up a question from my fellow reporters.

It's not who will win. I've got that wrong too often.

No, it's 'what is purdah?'. The word purdah comes from the Persian word for curtain, and refers to the official pre-election period.

For local councils there's statutory guidance about what sort of publicity they can produce, while, for the general election, there's conventions civil servants are expected to follow.

The idea - and it's a sound one - is central and local government should not provide publicity, or make announcements about new or controversial government initiatives, which could be seen as advantageous to people or parties standing in the election.

I've been frustrated in the past by press officers saying they couldn't answer my questions because of purdah. The guidance is not that they cannot answer questions. The guidance says they should give factual responses.

And I've had examples in the past month or so where councillors haven't had a clue what purdah means.

If you're reading this, councillors, you can say anything you like, so long as you don't use council resources to do so. It's up to me to be fair and balanced, as we always aim to be. But one councillor, despite being due to speak at a public meeting about an issue, wouldn't be quoted in a preview story, because he feared purdah meant he couldn't.

Another, who did speak to me, rang back five minutes later worried he shouldn't have spoken to me.

And one of my colleagues went to a meeting of Norfolk County Council's Health and Wellbeing Board this week, where purdah reared its head. A member of the public asked a question about the future of health and social care in Norfolk and Waveney, only to be told that couldn't be answered.

Guidance from the Local Government Association says councils are allowed to continue to discharge normal council business (yes, even controversial planning applications) during purdah.

Asking public questions (and answering them) seems, to me at least, to be part of normal council business...