What a parish council website must publish

Clerks are often handed two jobs at once. One is to put the money, the minutes and the land on a website. The other is to make that website usable, and to say in public how far it gets. They come from different documents. A tidy meetings page can still have no accessibility statement. A statement can sit on a site that hides the payments.

This guide is about those publication duties for parish and town councils in England. It follows the Transparency code for smaller authorities, the Local Government Transparency Code 2015, the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, and the accessibility regulations. It is for a clerk who has to put the papers online. It is not a ruling for your auditor.

Which transparency rules apply

Turnover, in both codes, means the higher of the council’s gross income for the year and its gross expenditure for the year. Use the figure the AGAR already works from. Do not invent a third definition.

If that figure does not exceed £25,000, the Transparency code for smaller authorities (opens in a new tab) applies. The government made it mandatory from 1 April 2015. It covers parish councils, internal drainage boards, charter trustees and port health authorities at or under that turnover. The same test applies to a town council.

If turnover is over £200,000, the Local Government Transparency Code 2015 (opens in a new tab) includes that parish council in its definition of a local authority. The list in the 2015 code is longer. It is not the smaller-authorities list with a different cover. Do not paste the 2015 list onto a small parish and call the job done. Do not ignore it if you are over £200,000.

If the council sits between those two figures, neither definition is a clean fit. You still have the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 (opens in a new tab). Those regulations require smaller authorities to publish the Annual Governance and Accountability Return and the notice of public rights. Read both codes, then ask your auditor or your county association before you treat one list as the whole duty. Our compliance page is the short version of what we will and will not decide for you.

There is also a PDF of the Transparency code for smaller authorities (opens in a new tab).

What smaller authorities publish

The code says smaller authorities should publish a set list. The yearly financial items must go up not later than 1 July in the year immediately after the accounting year they relate to. Publish them on a website people can use without paying. That can be the council’s own site. The code also allows the billing authority’s site, usually the district, borough or unitary council. A page of your own is easier for a resident to find, and it is what we build.

Once a year, publish:

• Each item of expenditure above £100. The code asks for the date, a short summary of the purpose, and the amount, and it sets out the other details to include. A full list of transactions also meets the requirement. You do not have to put every invoice on the website. The bills stay available for inspection during the public inspection period.
• The end of year accounts, in the form the AGAR uses. Publishing the relevant page of the completed return is enough. It needs the Responsible Financial Officer’s signature and the chair’s signature from the meeting that approved it.
• The annual governance statement.
• The internal audit report. The annual internal audit report is the document the code points at.
• A list of councillor responsibilities. Include every councillor’s name, any committee they sit on, whether they are chair or vice-chair, and any outside body they attend for the council.
• Public land and building assets. For each one, publish a description (including size, if you have it), the location, who owns or looks after it, the date of acquisition if you know it, the cost or a proxy value, and the present use. If this already sits in the asset register, you can publish the register, or a cut-down version that shows only the land and buildings.

Some items are needed more often than once a year:

• Draft minutes of formal meetings, within one month of the meeting. That includes full council, committees and sub-committees. The minutes should be signed at that meeting or the next one.
• Agendas, and the papers that go with them, not later than three clear days before the meeting. Make the agenda as full as you can.

Councils over £200,000 should use the 2015 code itself. Its spend line and its timings are different from the list above.

The accessibility regulations

Payments and minutes are only half of what the site is for. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (opens in a new tab) apply to council websites. Parish councils are not in the list of bodies those regulations leave out.

GOV.UK’s accessibility requirements (opens in a new tab) currently expect WCAG 2.2 AA. We build following WCAG 2.2 AA standards. An automated scan cannot show that a live site meets that standard, and we will not tell you that it does. The council remains responsible for the PDFs, images and link text it uploads after launch.

The regulations also require an accessibility statement. It has to be easy to find, and it has to be honest about the parts that are still hard to use. The guide to accessibility statements covers what to put in it, and links to the GOV.UK sample.

The regulations contain a narrow route called disproportionate burden. It is not a sentence you add because a PDF is inconvenient. If a council wants to rely on it, the statement has to explain the assessment. That is a decision for the council, with proper advice, not a line we will drop into a template and call finished.

A shape that fits the papers

These pages match the duties:

• Meetings, with the agenda, the papers and the minutes kept on the same meeting.
• Finance, with the AGAR, the payments over £100, and the notice of public rights.
• Councillors, with responsibilities and declarations of interest.
• Policies, including a publication scheme for freedom of information requests. Parish and town councils are public authorities under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
• An accessibility statement, a privacy notice, and a contact route that reaches the clerk.

That is the structure of the shared WordPress theme. Darwen Town Council is the flagship. Cliviger Parish Council and Habergham Eaves Parish Council use the same theme with their own content. You can see all three on the work page. The services page lists what a new site includes. Assertion 10 is covered on the compliance page: we do not sign it.

Before you treat this as your council’s checklist

Turnover changes, and guidance is updated. A charity, a joint committee, or a lot of land can add papers this page does not list. Ask your auditor or your county association if you need a ruling. We will build the pages. This page is not that ruling.

If you want a second pair of eyes on the site you have now, the free website check is a short look at the public pages. It is not an audit.