Frequently asked questions.

Parish is £299 to set up and £449 a year, so the year-1 total is £748. Town is £499 to set up and £649 a year, so the year-1 total is £1,148. Flagship (Darwen) is £499 to set up and £749 a year, so the year-1 total is £1,248. Those figures are the ones on the pricing page. There is also a multi-council add-on of £15 a month and £200 setup per extra council.

Pricing

The yearly fee includes hosting and SSL/TLS, WordPress core, plugin and theme updates, backups and security monitoring, technical support within reasonable use, and clerk training at launch. Setup is charged once. The website fee is once a year. There is no monthly version of the hosting fee.

What the yearly fee includesTerms

Unless the written order says otherwise, we charge separately for uploading agendas or minutes for you, writing or rewriting content, major design changes, migration beyond the standard migration, making existing PDFs accessible, extra training sessions, email licences, day-to-day mailbox administration, and managed publishing. Self-managed is included: The clerk publishes. We look after the platform, hosting and updates. Managed Basic is ~£20/mo: Up to 4 routine uploads or changes a month. 2-business-day turnaround. Managed Plus is ~£40/mo: Up to 10 routine uploads or changes a month. 1-business-day turnaround. Bespoke is a quote: For councils with a heavier publishing load. We agree the allowance with you. The services page lists the same starting points. The written order records the price you agree.

Managed publishingTerms

The contract runs for a year and then renews yearly. Either of us can end it at a renewal date by giving at least 30 days’ written notice. Either of us can end it earlier if the other side materially breaks the terms and does not put that right within 30 days of being asked in writing. We may change the yearly fee for a renewal. We will tell you the new fee before the renewal date, in time for you to give notice if you do not want to continue. Invoices are payable within 30 days. The detail is in the terms, which a meeting can read before you sign.

Contract terms

The council owns its content. The council owns, or remains the registrant of, its domain. We own the shared theme. For the length of the contract we grant a non-exclusive licence to use that theme for your site. When the contract ends, the licence ends. We give you a full export of the site content and files, and we help you transfer the domain to a registrar you name. The export is your content and files. It is not a copy of the theme for you to reuse elsewhere.

Ownership in the terms

Parish and town councils can apply for a .gov.uk domain, and we recommend it. GOV.UK’s guide for parish councils treats a .gov.uk website and email as part of moving across. It is not a rule that a council which still uses another address is already in breach. Town councils are expected to use .gov.uk. Many parish councils choose it too. Email licences and mailbox administration are charged separately.

.gov.uk guideDomain and email

No. We are not a registrar, and we do not approve domain applications. We help you choose a name and prepare the application, then Krystal Hosting, an approved registrar, submits it. We have registered clivigerparishcouncil.gov.uk and haberghameavesparishcouncil.gov.uk through Krystal. The clerk is the registrant. You can read the steps in our .gov.uk guide and on the .gov.uk domain and email page.

How .gov.uk setup works

We build with accessibility at the centre, following WCAG 2.2 AA standards. We do not install overlay widgets. We do not describe a live council site as meeting WCAG 2.2 AA until representative pages and documents have been tested. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 require an accessibility statement. The council keeps that statement up to date and is responsible for what it uploads. An automated scan is not a certificate. Our compliance page and the accessibility statement guide say the same.

ComplianceAccessibility statements

For enquiries to this marketing site, Room Filler Ltd is the controller. The privacy notice explains what the form collects, the lawful basis, and that we keep enquiry records for up to 2 years unless they become a client file. You can ask for access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection and, where it applies, portability. You can complain to the Information Commissioner. For a council website we host, the council is the controller and we are the processor. The terms include the Article 28 clauses. We do not sell personal information. Marketing email follows PECR: we may email a council address about similar website services, you can object, and we do not email a personal address for marketing unless that person has agreed.

Privacy noticeCookies and privacy notices

Yes. It is WordPress. Clerk training at launch is included, and we leave written notes. Self-managed publishing means the clerk publishes and we look after the platform. If you would rather we upload routine papers, Managed Basic (~£20/mo) and Managed Plus (~£40/mo) are optional. The council is responsible for the accessibility of content it uploads, including PDFs, images and link text.

Services

Council WordPress sites we run are hosted by Cloudways. Hosting, SSL, updates, backups and security monitoring sit inside the yearly fee. The terms say we will use reasonable endeavours to keep the site available, backed up and reasonably secure. They do not promise a particular uptime percentage. Email support goes to info@parishdigital.co.uk. We aim to reply within one working day. That is a working aim, not a promise that every fault will be fixed in that time. Keep your own copies of documents you care about. We will try to restore content from the latest backup we hold.

Hosting in the terms

The terms define a standard migration as up to 40 pages, up to 3 years of minutes and agendas, up to 300 PDFs, and existing news posts. Anything beyond that is quoted separately. Inside that cap we start with the papers residents and auditors look for: recent minutes and agendas, the AGAR, councillors and registers of interest, and the core policies. The switch page sets the steps out.

Switching providerStandard migration

Yes. We build the new site on a private address. The site residents use stays where it is until the council agrees the moment to change. Website DNS and email DNS are different records. We do not move mailboxes ourselves. Krystal Hosting, or your email provider, does that. We plan the change so the website move does not take email down with it. Where you still control the old address, we set redirects.

Keeping the site live

It is a short manual look at the public pages of the site you have now. We look for an accessibility statement, issues against WCAG 2.2 AA, HTTPS, cookie consent and a privacy notice, a .gov.uk domain, Transparency Code publishing where the smaller-authorities code applies, and how the site behaves on a phone. It uses the same enquiry form as a quote. The source is recorded as website-check, and we ask for the current address. It is not a legal audit, not an accessibility certificate, and not a guarantee. We reply by the same route as any other enquiry.

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