Parish Council Website Designs
A range of website design approaches to complement your range of activities
The Challenge For Smaller Councils
The Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities was issued in 2014 to provide accountability for smaller authorities with a turnover of under £25,000 that were and are exempt from a routine external audit under the new Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. The Transparency Code does not exempt smaller authorities from their reponsibilities under the Freedom of information Act 2000 but the Freedom of information Act 2000 requirements would already be met via the authorities’ publication Scheme.
The publishing requirements to meet these regulatory requirements primarily using a website are broadly:
- To introduce the council and expain what it does.
- To introduce the councilors.
- To meet the Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities which covers:
- What we spend and how we spend it.
- What our priorities are and how we are doing.
- How we make decisions.
- Our policies and procedures.
- Lists and registers.
- The services we offer.
- To provide information that is useful for local residents, local businesses and tourists.
- To provide council contacts information.
In addition a website needs to be:
- Resilient; which means that it needs to be protected from deliberate or accidental deletion or corruption.
- Compliant; with Government standards
- Supported; i.e. for system updates and user assistance.
Meeting The Needs of Smaller Councils
We have a design approach to meet the requirements of the Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities and to allow for the upgrade of the website (either by ourselves or the council). For example, additional information could be added incrementally to cover the the Council’s publication scheme for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Alternatively you can click on the arrows above for summaries of the more complex solutions that we offer.
The website provides general explanatory context to the information to make it understandable for the general public, so you don’t have to prepare all the content. The information that you will add to the website is typically contained in pdf copies of the normal documents produced by the council and so there is no rekeying of information or duplication of effort.
The outline information structure is:
- Who we are and what we do:
- information about the council, its governance, the councillors
- An overview of the activities of the council.
- What we spend:
- lists of expenditure items above £100
- end of year accounts as required for the annual return
- a bank reconciliation
- year on year comparisons with explanations of the variances
- explanation of the balances carries forward and current assets.
- Compliance and good governance:
- Annual Governance Statements.
- Internal Audit Reports.
- How we make decisions:
- Council meeting schedules, agendas and minutes.
- Parish meeting agendas and minutes.
- Lists and registers:
- Public Land and Building asset registers.
- Useful Community information and contacts:
- Local news and events
- Contacts for council services such as:
- allotments or
- use of a village hall.
- Notices, reports and galleries for cultural, sporting, social or other community events or interests.
In addition our websites are:
- responsive i.e. designed for phones and tablets as well as laptops and desktops.
- automatically backed up to a secure data centre.
- compliant with government guidelines for local government websites.
- scalable, allowing your website to grow and cover additional topics and provide additional features as the council’s publishing ambitions grow.
- easy to update with notices, news and documents.
- easy to handover to a new clerk or administrator with step by step user guides.
- easy to add news, articles, images, photos and surveys, additional information pages much like creating new Word documents.
Once we have clarified your requirements we can add additional pages that are of community benefit such as lists of community organisations, services from the local authority and other public service providers.
We can supply stock images to add visual content but we prefer to use as many images as possible from your area to provide a familiar and distinctive visual theme.
For councils progressing toward the achievement of an award from the NALC Local Council Awards scheme we offer websites to complement the scheme. Click the open Council Website slider above to vew the additional content for each award level.
Smart phones and tablets
Mobiles Overtake Desktops
Web browsing with a smart phone or tablet computer overtook the volume of web browsing by desktop and laptop computers in November 2016 according to Web analytics firm StatCounter. For website owners this means that it is essential that websites are designed for use on multiple devices
Multi-device display built in
