Most people reading this article will have a boss of some kind or other. So imagine you are sitting at work one day and you get a phone call or a letter from the big chief.

They're not contacting you as your boss, you understand, but in a personal capacity or with some other official hat on.

But it's about a work issue, and they want you to do something, or not do something, or at least re-think a planned course of action.

How would you react?

Would it give you pause for thought?

And would your response be the same to a request from an ordinary member of the public?

This is not a million miles away from the situation some members of staff at Department of Environment Planning Service have found themselves in.

DoE Minister Sammy Wilson has been contacting them — in his capacity as East Antrim MP and MLA — about individual planning applications in his constituency. His lobbying is clearly designed to influence decisions — otherwise what would be the point of it?

The Department's top brass has given its blessing and instructed staff to treat his representations exactly like those of other public representatives.

But Nipsa, the civil servants' union, has gone on record to express concerns about officials being placed in an ‘invidious’ position.

Mr Wilson is never one to shy away from a controversy — unlike some prominent figures at Stormont — and has been characteristically upfront on the issue.

You can be pretty certain that suggestions that he should leave the lobbying to DUP colleagues in East Antrim will get short shrift from him.

He sees it as part of his job as a constituency politician and he is not going to be deflected from it.

Mr Wilson's constituency caseload has obviously not eased since he joined the Stormont Executive.

Official documents disclosed to the Belfast Telegraph under freedom of information show that the MLA wrote some 26 letters to planners in his first three months as Minister. There were also face-to-face meetings with officials on a string of cases.

Mr Wilson and his admirers will doubtless cite the figures to show how hard he works for East Antrim.

The Minister had a pop at the Belfast Telegraph last week, in an interview published by this newspaper.

Claiming that there had been ‘mischief making’ over reported unease within the Department about his lobbying, he said: “The initial allegation came from some unnamed person — it could have been Tommy Smith from the street. I was a bit miffed, the fact that your paper ran the story without it being substantiated in any way. In fact, it was an anonymous complaint, and then when the story died they brought the trade unions in.”

The reports were, in fact, well-sourced and have now been vindicated by internal emails from within his Department.

In one, Planning Service chief Cynthia Smith tells a colleague that the issue of the Minister's representations has been raised with DoE Permanent Secretary Stephen Peover, and that the head of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency has raised ‘similar type concerns’.

Ms Smith adds: “When Stephen returns from leave we will discuss (again) with the Minister.”

In his interview, Mr Wilson rejected any suggestion of staff being pressured. “First of all, I would never, ever dream of going in and saying, ‘I'm a Minister, you get that sorted, you do what I say'. I know where the limits are, and if I did my officials would be equally entitled to tell me to naff off,” he said.

It has also been stressed that Mr Wilson is not lobbying on applications which will come to him for a final decision.

But critics suggest that it is not always possible to predict in advance when proposals will require a Ministerial verdict.

There are also potential issues of public perception and fairness for the DoE.

Imagine, for example, the reaction of someone who has had a proposal turned down after Sammy Wilson MLA wrote to planners objecting to his application. Likewise, a protest group that failed to block a development in its neighbourhood would not be best pleased if the politician had lobbied planners to approve the scheme.

The official distinction between constituency representative and Minister might not prove a great comfort in such circumstances.