Planning a council website migration

A plan turns it into a routine job

Moving to a new website can feel risky when the current one carries agendas, minutes, finance records and statutory notices that residents and auditors rely on. In practice a move is rarely dramatic. With a short plan and the right supplier doing the technical work, most of it happens quietly in the background.

This guide covers the parts a council needs to think about. If you work with us, we handle the build, the redirects, the domain and email changes and the accessibility, and we walk your clerk through the rest.

Audit your current content

Before anything moves, list what is on the old site and decide, page by page:

• Keep pages and documents that are current and still needed
• Update anything out of date, so it goes across correct rather than being fixed later
• Retire pages that duplicate others or are no longer relevant

Pay particular attention to the document library. Every policy, set of minutes and finance record that has to stay published should be on the list, with a note of where it belongs on the new site.

Your domain and email

Decide early whether you are keeping your current web address or moving to an official .gov.uk domain. A .gov.uk address is clearer for residents and harder to spoof, and we can register and manage one for you at no extra cost on either of our packages. Our page on .gov.uk domains for parish councils explains how the move works. If you keep an existing domain, we take care of pointing it at the new site.

Council-owned email is also part of the AGAR question explained in our guide to Assertion 10. Council mailboxes move at the same time. Plan the switch so no email is missed, and tell anyone who writes to the council if an address is changing.

Keep links working

Residents bookmark pages. Other websites, and search engines, link to them. When the site moves, those addresses change, so each important old address needs a redirect that sends visitors to the right page on the new site. We map these before go-live so a saved link to last year’s minutes still lands somewhere useful rather than on an error page.

Accessibility from the start

A migration is a good moment to get accessibility right rather than inherit old problems. The new site should be built to WCAG 2.2 AA, with an accessibility statement in place on day one. See Understanding WCAG 2.2 for what that involves.

Choose the timing

Avoid switching in a busy week. Steer clear of the few days before a full council meeting, the annual public rights period when residents can inspect the accounts, and the run-up to an election. A quiet fortnight gives everyone time to check the new site and settle in.

Test, then go live

Before the switch, check the new site on a phone as well as a computer, click through the menus, open a few documents, and try the contact form. A short soft launch, where the site is live but not yet announced, gives a final chance to catch anything. Then the old address points to the new site and you are done.

After the switch

Your clerk gets training on the new content management system as part of the move. Keep an eye on the contact form and the site for the first week or two. Let residents know through your usual channels that the website has changed. The old site can be closed down once you are confident nothing is missing, and we keep a copy if your council wants one for its records.

What we handle

We do the technical work: building the new site to standard, migrating content and documents, setting up redirects, helping with the domain and email, and putting the accessibility statement in place. Your council decides what content carries over and gives it a final read. See Support for how we help after launch, or get in touch to talk through a move.

Questions clerks often ask