Software package

Council portal package

A council website and portal with meeting calendars, agendas and minutes carrying their publication dates, a councillor and committee register, notices and consultations, plain-language service pages, facility hire and an accessible document library, ready to configure around your council.

Custom build Concept demo

Get a quote for this package

Who it is for

Built for

A good fit

Parish, town and community councils and the smaller district councils that publish through a clerk's office rather than a communications department: typically one to four staff, between one and a dozen meeting bodies, a village or town hall and perhaps allotments, a cemetery or sports pitches to let. Daily users are the clerk who drafts and publishes agendas and minutes, the administrator who answers the phone and handles hire requests, the communications officer or volunteer who posts news and alerts, the councillors who keep their own profile up to date and read the papers, and the residents who look up a meeting, respond to a consultation or book the hall from their phone.

Also worth knowing

It is less suited to large unitary and county councils with dozens of service departments, case management and a customer contact centre, and to councils that need a full planning or licensing register inside the site. Those need custom work; the package shows planning applications only as a list supplied by the planning authority with the council's comment.

The operational problem it solves

How it runs, step by step

The clerk opens the publishing desk on Thursday morning with the full council meeting a week away.

The agenda has been drafted in the agenda template, so the items, reports and the signed notice are already structured; she presses publish and the system records the publication date, generates an accessible HTML page and a PDF, posts the notice to the meetings calendar and emails the councillors a link.
The planning committee's minutes from last week come back approved, so she moves them from draft to approved and the approval date is written against the record, with the draft version kept.

In the office, the administrator sees two hire requests for the main hall waiting in the hire queue: a Saturday party and a Tuesday evening class.

The calendar shows the Saturday is free, so he confirms it, the hirer gets a payment link, and the slot turns from held to booked when the card payment clears.
The Tuesday clashes with the youth club, so he offers the small hall instead from the same screen.
A resident has responded to the play area consultation through the response form; the running count on the consultation page shows forty-one responses with eleven days to go, and the clerk can export them as a table for the committee papers at any time.
At lunchtime the communications officer posts a road closure alert from her phone; it appears on the home page and goes out to the alert list.
In the afternoon a resident asks for a copy of the cemetery policy as it stood two years ago, and the administrator finds it in the document library with its published date and the date it was replaced.

Features

What the package does

The package ships as modules that follow the council year: the publishing layer of meetings, documents and notices, the people layer of councillors and committees, the engagement layer of consultations, news and alerts, and the operations layer of service pages, facility hire and payments. Each module below lists what it does; the comparison table shows which package variant includes it.

Content and editorial

Meetings, agendas and minutesEach meeting body gets a calendar with agendas and minutes that carry publication and approval dates, so residents can see what was published and when.

Workflow and tasks

Agenda and minutes templatesThe clerk drafts from a template and the system produces accessible HTML and PDF versions, keeping draft versions after approval.

Directory and reviews

Councillor and committee registerCouncillor profiles, committee membership and declarations documents sit in one register that councillors can keep up to date themselves.

Documents and cases

Document libraryPolicies and reports are filed by category with published and superseded dates and an accessibility status, so an older version can still be found on request.

Messaging and notifications

Notices, news and alertsStaff post notices, news and road-closure style alerts from a phone, and residents can subscribe to receive them by email.

Forms and requests

Service pages with routed contact formsPlain-language service pages show opening hours and send each enquiry to the right officer through a routed contact form.
Consultations with response formsResidents answer a consultation through a structured form, the page shows a running count, and the clerk exports responses for committee papers.

Compliance and records

Accessibility statement and document statusAn accessibility statement page plus a per-document status show which published files have been checked, recorded as a design target rather than a compliance claim.

Bookings and diary

Facility hire and paymentsAn availability calendar and hire queue let staff confirm or move requests, with a card payment link issued once a slot is agreed.

Integrations

Planning application listPlanning applications are imported from a planning authority feed or file and listed on the site for residents to browse.

Listings and search

Allotment and cemetery registers, meeting recordingsRegisters for allotments and cemeteries hold annual charges and payment links, and webcast links or recordings can be attached to a meeting record.

Package variants compared

Website
Custom Platform

Which features each package variant includes
Feature	Website	Custom Platform
Meetings, agendas and minutes	Included	Included
Agenda and minutes templates	Optional	Included
Councillor and committee register	Included	Included
Document library	Included	Included
Notices, news and alerts	Included	Included
Service pages with routed contact forms	Included	Included
Accessibility statement and document status	Included	Included
Consultations with response forms	Optional	Optional
Facility hire and payments	Optional	Optional
Planning application list	Optional	Optional
Allotment and cemetery registers, meeting recordings	Not in this variant	Optional

Roles and permissions

Who does what

Clerk
- Draft, publish and approve agendas and minutes for every body with dates recorded
- Manage the document library, categories and accessibility status
- Create consultations and export responses
- Set committee membership, terms and councillor accounts
Administrator
- Confirm, move and cancel facility hire requests and issue payment links
- Answer routed enquiries and record the outcome
- Upload documents into categories the clerk has set
- Maintain service pages and opening hours
Communications officer
- Post news and alerts from a phone
- Send meeting notifications and newsletters to subscribers
- Edit home page highlights and seasonal notices
Councillor
- Update their own profile, contact details and declarations document
- Read agendas, reports and minutes for their committees
- See their meeting calendar and subscribe to it
Resident
- Find meetings, agendas and minutes by body and date
- Respond to a consultation through its form
- Request a facility hire and pay online
- Subscribe to alerts and find the right contact for a service

Example screen

Concept demo

Concept demo of a council portal publishing desk showing meetings by body with agenda and minutes status, open consultations with response counts and a queue of hall hire requests.

The clerk's publishing desk: upcoming meetings per body with agenda status, minutes awaiting approval, open consultations with response counts and closing dates, and hire requests waiting for confirmation.

Scope and options

What is included and what is extra

In the base package

Meeting bodies with calendars, agendas and minutes carrying publication and approval dates
Agenda and minutes templates producing accessible HTML and PDF
Councillor and committee register with profiles and declarations documents
Document library with categories, published and superseded dates and accessibility status
Notices, news and alerts with email subscription
Service pages in plain language with opening hours and routed contact forms
Accessibility statement page and per-document status

Common add-ons

Consultations with structured response forms, counts and export
Facility hire with availability calendar, hire queue and card payment adapter
Planning application list imported from a planning authority feed or file
Allotment and cemetery registers with annual charges and payment links
Meeting webcast links and recordings attached to the meeting record

Needs custom work

Integration with a specific accounting package or committee management system
Case management for a customer contact centre
Bespoke reporting on consultations or hire income
Multi-council shared platform for a group of parishes

See the custom development service

Ownership, maintenance and pricing

After the build

Deployment and ownership

The package runs on hosting the council controls or on hosting we manage; the choice is made in the proposal and can change later. The council owns the code and its data in either case. Meetings, documents with their dates, consultation responses, hire records and subscriber lists can be exported at any time in standard formats, so a change of clerk or a change of provider never leaves the publication record stranded.

Maintenance

Maintenance is optional and scoped separately from the setup. When taken, it covers security updates to the platform and its dependencies, monitoring of email sends and payment callbacks, backups, periodic accessibility checks of new templates, and a monthly window for small configuration changes such as a new committee, a new document category or a change to hire rules. Larger changes are quoted as change requests against the original scope.

Pricing model

Priced per proposal.

The package is sold as a one-off setup and configuration with optional monthly maintenance and hosting as separate recurring lines. The setup figure depends on the number of meeting bodies, the add-ons selected, the number of facilities and whether payments are taken, the volume of historic documents migrated with their dates and whether the council hosts it. Your proposal states each line separately so recurring costs are never hidden in the setup.

Software package

Custom build Concept demo

Variants

Meeting bodies with calendars, agendas and minutes carrying publication and approval dates
Agenda and minutes templates producing accessible HTML and PDF
Councillor and committee register with profiles and declarations documents
Document library with categories, published and superseded dates and accessibility status

Priced per proposal. A written proposal is the only binding figure.

Get a quote for this package Prefer a fully custom build?

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How are agendas and minutes published?

The clerk drafts in a structured template, publishes with one action, and the system records the publication date, produces an accessible page and PDF, updates the calendar and notifies councillors. Minutes move from draft to approved after the meeting, with the approval date recorded and earlier versions kept.

Does the package make the council compliant with publication or accessibility regulations?

No. It gives you a record of what was published and when, an accessibility status for each document, templates that produce accessible output and a published accessibility statement. Deciding what must be published, and whether the council has met its duties, stays with the clerk and the council.

How does facility hire work?

Each hall, room or pitch has a public availability calendar. A resident requests a slot, the request waits in a queue for the administrator, and on confirmation a payment link is issued through the card provider connected at setup. The slot shows as held until paid and booked once the payment clears; regular hirers can be given a standing booking.

Can residents respond to consultations online?

With the consultations add-on, yes. Each consultation has its own response form built from the questions the clerk sets, a closing date and a response count. Responses are exported as a table for committee papers; the portal does not analyse or weigh them.

Can we show planning applications?

As a list only. The planning add-on imports applications from the planning authority as a feed or a periodic file and lets the clerk attach the council's comment and the meeting where it was considered. Decisions remain with the planning authority and are shown as supplied.

What happens to the old site?

Historic agendas, minutes and policies are migrated with their original publication dates where the old site or your folders hold them, and redirects are set from the old addresses so links in printed newsletters and search results keep working.

Is this a finished product I can see running?

Not yet. The readiness badge on this page shows the real state: the package is currently a custom build assembled from our documents, forms, bookings and orders modules for each council, and the example screen is a labelled concept demo rather than a live council site. Requirements outside the listed options go through custom council portal development.

Get a quote for Council portal package

Tell us about your locations, the people who will use it and the add-ons you need. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.