We have been providing websites to Councils for over 10 years.
During that time we’ve improved our products, hosting and support processes to increase performance and security and to reduce costs.
Many Councils already have limited resources and budgets without the need for a lengthy design process.
We’ve prepared a few Frequently Asked Questions below that cover some of the more popular questions that we get asked by new clients. If we haven’t covered your question below we’ll be happy to discuss any questions you have.
General Questions
Absolutely not! You’re free to add as many pages and as much content as you wish.
Equally so, you can add as many document categories, news categories, events and notices as you need with no restrictions.
We do offer training on using the website. In fact, we recommend it if you’re going to maintain the content yourself.
We can offer face-to-face training at our Taunton office or at your location (with additional costs).
We highly recommend that we run the training online using our dedicated training room. We can train more people at once and also record the session (with your permission) so you can re-watch it as a reminder later on.
All our servers are located in secure data centres in the UK.
The power, performance and security provided are dependent on your requirements.
We’ve spent a lot of time in researching and investigating different services that can be used to improve the performance and security of both websites and email services.
In addition, we have remote off-site backups to protect your data. These backups are stored within the EU.
Our normal support service provides everything to maintain the website including software updates, technical support etc.
We work together with Clerks and Council staff to provide as much assistance as they require. We also offer to upload content, minutes etc on request.
Migration Questions
Yes that’s fine.
We would create your new website on a temporary development domain that you will be able to access. Once the website is completed we move it over to your domain name. This means that your existing website can remain live whilst we’re designing your new one.
To provide as much security and performance for the new website as possible, we recommend that we take control of the registration or at least have it pointed to our nameservers.
We’re able to supply a new domain name including:
- org.uk
- gov.uk
- gov.wales
- llyw.cymru
There is currently no requirement for a Council to use a .gov domain name and so this is a personal choice of the council, although you can get into difficulties if you don’t register a domain name correctly.
Please also be aware that the cabinet office needs to approve new .gov applications and as such they have strict naming protocols.
As an example, a Parish Council has two choices:
- exampletownparishcouncil.gov.uk
- exampletown-pc.gov.uk
Under certain circumstances, they may also approve abbreviated acronyms for long area names.
That’s no problem.
The basic email services we offer are intended for simpler users. Some larger councils have different requirements and are increasingly using services such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
We can provide and support an email system on Google Workspace or provide our basic service.
Our basic email package comes with 5 free email accounts with 1GB of storage on each.
Compliance Questions
Yes, our sites are fully compliant with The Transparency Code. You can add all the required details for each Council Member in addition to publishing the required documentation relating to meetings and finance. Once the website is published, compliance rests with the Council to ensure that they continue to publish the required information at the correct times.
Yes, our websites are fully compliant with WCAG2.1 AA. In addition, we can provide you with an Accessibility Statement to enable your Councils compliance. Despite our websites being fully compliant with all the technical aspects of WCAG2.1aa we must stress the importance of ensuring that any content added by the Council should meet the same standards. We are always on hand to advise even once the website has been made live.
As a side note, our websites are already compliant with the forthcoming WCAG2.2 standard, as already stated however, the responsibility for new content compliance lies with the person responsible for adding content to the website.
Yes, our sites are fully compliant with Section 55 of the Local Government (Democracy)(Wales) Act 2013. You can add all the required details for each Council Member in addition to publishing the required documentation relating to meetings and finance, council members etc. in accordance with the Statutory Guidance re Access to Information on Community And Town Councils.
If your Council has a Welsh Language Scheme and its practice under the Welsh Language Scheme is to produce material bilingually, then that applies the same to material that is produced electronically. In this instance we have solutions to assist you in achieving this.
Our websites are compliant with GDPR however, much like accessibility, this isn’t a one time thing. Adding new content could affect ongoing compliance and so we’d always advise caution by ensuring that the person responsible for adding content to the website is familiar with the regulations.
Our websites are fully responsive meaning that they instantly adapt to display on any size screen including mobile devices and tablets. They also display on all browsers.