Threapwood Parish Council

One reliable place for a small parish

Threapwood is a small parish on the Cheshire and Wales border. Its council does not need a large or complicated website. What it wanted was one dependable place where residents could always find meetings, plans, documents and who to contact, at threapwoodparishcouncil.gov.uk.

For a small council, the risk with a website is that it becomes another job that slips. The site had to be quick to keep current and hard to get wrong, so that keeping it up to date never depended on one person having a spare afternoon.

The brief

Threapwood wanted a website that:

• published the essentials a parish council must make available, and nothing it did not need
• gave meetings, plans and the document library a clear, permanent home
• listed the councillors and how to contact them
• was accessible to every resident, on any device
• took almost no effort to keep current

What we built

We built the site on our Classic package. The structure is deliberately short: latest news, upcoming events, a file library, your councillors, and contact. Everything a resident is likely to want is one click from the home page.

The document library is the heart of the site. Replacing an out of date file takes moments, so minutes, agendas and plans stay current without a rebuild. Every page meets the WCAG 2.2 AA standard, and the council has an accessibility statement in place.

We set up the content with the clerk and showed them how to keep it current in the content editor, with our team on hand for anything they would rather pass over.

The outcome

• a small, focused site that covers everything the parish council must publish
• meetings, plans and documents always current, with almost no upkeep
• councillor and contact details easy to find
• an accessible site that works on any device, meeting the council’s obligations

Common questions

Is a site this small still compliant?

Yes. Size has nothing to do with it. Threapwood’s site publishes everything a parish council is required to, and meets the same accessibility standard as our largest builds.

Who keeps it up to date?

The clerk does, using the content editor for the handful of changes a small parish needs. Anything they would rather not do themselves, they send to us and we make it, usually the same working day.

Does it meet the accessibility rules?

Yes. Every Parish Council Pigeon site is built to WCAG 2.2 AA, with an accessibility statement published from launch.

You can see the site at threapwoodparishcouncil.gov.uk, or look at more of our work.