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Service

Neighbourhood portal development

For committees and organisers of residents' groups, neighbourhood forums and local notice communities who need a portal where verified residents post, respond and vote by street or area, with moderation the committee controls rather than a social network it does not.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A neighbourhood of a few thousand homes talks to itself through a tangle of channels: a public social media group with members from three towns away, two messaging groups per street that nobody can join without knowing someone, a printed newsletter four times a year and a noticeboard outside the shops.

  • A lost cat is posted in one group and found in another.
  • A warning about a doorstep scam reaches the streets where someone happened to share it.
  • The residents' association asks for views on a traffic scheme and gets forty comments in a thread, half from people who do not live there, and no way to count who thinks what.

Where it gets harder

The volunteers who run the public group spend their evenings removing adverts, arguing about whether a post about a planning application is political, and being asked by the committee to find a post from last March.

  • Local businesses want to be found by the people who live within walking distance and either spam the group or stay invisible.
  • Events are announced three times in three places and the hall is still half empty.
  • When a dispute flares up between neighbours, it happens in front of two thousand people, and the moderators have no way to say who reported what, who was warned, or whether the person posting is a resident at all.
  • The committee cannot prove to the council that a consultation response reflects the neighbourhood, because membership of the group proves nothing about where anyone lives.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom neighbourhood portal build normally covers:

  • An area model of the neighbourhood With streets grouped into areas so that posts, alerts and polls can be aimed at a street, an area or the whole neighbourhood
  • Resident verification by address With a choice of methods such as a posted code, an invitation from a verified neighbour or committee approval against a street list, and a record of how each account was verified
  • A noticeboard with categories the committee defines Such as lost and found, recommendations, alerts, for sale and giveaways, and planning notices, each with its own rules on who may post and how long a post stays visible
  • Local business listings for traders within the area Claimed by the business and reviewed before they appear
  • Events with sign-up and a calendar per area
  • Private groups for a street A committee or an interest with their own membership
  • Polls restricted to verified residents of the streets they concern With results the committee can export
  • A moderation queue with reporting Warnings, muting and a log of every action
  • A digest of the week's posts and news sent By email to residents who want it

How discovery works

Discovery walks through a month in the neighbourhood with the committee: how residents are to be verified and by whom, how streets and areas are drawn, which categories are needed and which are deliberately absent, who moderates and what the escalation path is, whether businesses pay for a listing, and what the committee needs to report to the council or a funder. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: verify, post, respond, moderate, poll, digest.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Public, unverified membership, which is the problem being replaced
  • Direct messaging between residents outside groups unless the committee chooses it
  • Any claim that the portal resolves disputes or replaces the council's own reporting channels

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A neighbourhood forum covering twelve thousand homes across nine areas with a paid moderator, business listings sold by a volunteer treasurer and polls that feed a neighbourhood plan is a different build from a residents' association of four hundred homes with one moderator and a monthly digest, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of the neighbourhood's current channels, the street list and the committee's moderation practice
  • A written scope document naming each stage from verification to digest and what is excluded
  • Design of the noticeboard by area, the verification flow, the moderation queue and a poll on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Set-up of the street and area model and import of the existing member list as unverified accounts awaiting verification, where relevant
  • Moderation guidance written with the committee and shown inside the portal
  • Training for the committee, the moderators and a business listing volunteer, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the street list, the existing groups and their rules, the newsletter archive and the committee's contacts; a moderation lead named.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the committee chair, the moderation lead and a street representative; the verification method, the area model and the scope document are agreed with milestones.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the noticeboard, a post with replies, the verification steps, the moderation queue and a poll, reviewed on phones by residents the committee chooses.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: areas, accounts and verification first, then the noticeboard, categories and moderation, then businesses, events, groups, polls and the digest.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    The committee and a pilot street use the portal for a trial period: real posts, a real poll and a staged moderation case, telling us where the rules differ from practice.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Category rules, verification wording, moderation steps and digest layout are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Verification codes or invitations issued to the first streets, the digest tested on addresses you control, moderation guidance published, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The neighbourhood moves onto the portal street by street; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Email providers for verification codes, replies and the weekly digest
  • Postal mailing services for verification letters with a code
  • Mapping and address lookup services for the street and area model
  • Card payment providers where businesses pay for listings
  • Calendar feeds so residents can add events to their own devices
  • Council and police alert feeds imported as notices where available
  • Local news sources whose headlines appear in the digest with a link
  • Social media accounts the committee posts outward to, never inward from

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A neighbourhood forum of nine areas replacing a public group

The situation

A neighbourhood forum covering several thousand homes ran a public social media group with members from well beyond the area and two volunteer moderators who were losing the argument every evening.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build rather than a hosted community app is the verification record: the committee wanted to show the council that every poll response came from an address in the affected streets, and that the moderation log would stand up if a resident complained.

The scope we would propose

  • An area model of nine areas drawn from the street list
  • Verification by a posted code for most streets and committee approval for flats whose post is unreliable
  • A noticeboard with alerts visible neighbourhood-wide but recommendations and for-sale posts kept to the resident's area
  • Business listings claimed by traders and reviewed by a volunteer before publication
  • Polls restricted to the streets a scheme affects, with results exported for the neighbourhood plan
  • A moderation queue with a log of warnings and a three-step escalation agreed with the committee
  • A weekly digest in place of the printed newsletter for residents who opt in

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of homes, streets and areas in the model and how verification is done for each
  • Categories and their posting rules, and whether posts are moderated before or after publication
  • Business listings and whether they are paid, with a payment provider involved
  • Private groups, events with sign-up and polls with exportable results
  • Moderation team size, escalation steps and the depth of the audit log
  • Digest and notification channels and how many residents opt in
  • Import of an existing member list and the verification campaign for it
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Neighbourhood portal package

Verified resident accounts, street and area noticeboards with categories, local business listings, events, private groups, polls, moderation queue and a weekly digest for neighbourhood groups.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide between a custom build and the package?

Discovery compares how your neighbourhood wants to run with what the neighbourhood portal package does through configuration. A residents' group with standard categories, one verification method and a small moderation team usually fits the package. Several verification methods, paid listings with a treasurer's workflow, or polls that feed a formal plan point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

How are residents verified?

By the method the committee chooses in discovery: a code posted to the address, an invitation from an already verified neighbour, or committee approval against the street list. Each account records how and when it was verified, and the committee can require re-verification when a household moves.

Can the portal be used to respond to council consultations?

It can run a poll limited to verified residents of the affected streets and export the results with the verification method per response. Whether the council accepts that as evidence is for the council; the portal provides the record, not the standing.

What does moderation look like?

Residents report posts; reports land in a queue for the area moderator; the moderator can hide, warn, mute or escalate, and every action is logged with who did it and why. Category rules, such as pre-approval for planning notices, are set by the committee. The portal records moderation decisions; it does not make them.

Who owns the system afterwards?

The committee or the organisation it belongs to. Source code and data, including the verification records and the moderation log, are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and the portal can move to another provider.

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