Parish Council
“Community, Suppliers and partners will now reasonably expect a local council to have a .gov.uk domain.”
The Joint Panel on Accountability and Governance (JPAG) which issues proper practices for governance and accounts of small authorities, issued the above statement in its last edition. It is possible that in a few years, the guidance will become stricter and actively encourage councils to get .gov domains.
A domain is the address at which both websites and emails are found. You register the name as yours with a company called a domain registrar, and all traffic to that address will come to the websites or emails that you have set up with a host. The host can be the same as your domain registrar, or may be different. The domain that we currently use is Sticklepath.org which is not registered to the Council, but to Spencer Stallion. He uses a third-party host called 20i, and the email system called StackCP. There is no need to use the same company to host websites or organise emails for a single domain.
Existing websites and emails can be transferred to new domains, without too much expense or work. Most hosts will assist in the transfer.
A Government department, the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) has set up The Parish Council Domains Helper Service (PCDHS) which is able to help move councils on to a .Gov Domain, and offered £100 towards getting a domain, particularly aimed at small councils like ours. The Parish Council Domains Helper Service has now allocated over 80% of the funding available for councils moving to a gov.uk domain in this financial year, and it is unlikely there will be funding next year. We need to act soon to avoid missing out on the grant. The current host 20i, whilst it can register .Gov domains, cannot access the funding.
The companies allowed to register .Gov domains are limited, to ensure cyber security. Around 160 can register sites, but only 24 have experience of Parish Councils and will give an enhanced level of support – phone support, continuity of service, understanding of compliance and access to the £100 funding.
Pros and Cons for .Gov Domains
| Pros | Cons |
| Security – monitored by the National Cyber Security Office, also current domain does not have some settings correctly set. | Initial Cost – varies according to what services you require, and which registrar you choose |
| Legitimacy and Status – recognisable as a genuine part of local government | Ongoing Cost – this may be higher than at present, as the organisations allowed to host .Gov domains are bigger. Possibly £250-£300 for website, email and domain, but costs vary widely. The Council spends approx £190 at present. |
| Accountability and governance – Sign of professionalism and accountability | Will require some additional time from the Clerk for the organisation of the move, but no more ongoing time than at present. |
| Better Support – response times for our support are not good, and the Clerk does not currently have full admin access to the site, but does to the emails. | Some options may cause friction with the community who use the current website. It is unclear at present how much community content would be acceptable on a .Gov website. |
| Better Emails – councillors have complained about StackMail as an email system, it is slow and not easy to use. | |
| Admin Charge – We are currently charged an admin charge, but most hosts include all support in their hosting costs. |
Our current site is a community website, with the Parish Council relegated to a sub page along with the eleven other organisations. The site was the brainchild of Former Cllr Emma Bell who initiated its creation in 2012. The Parish Council and Village Hall each put £200 initial funding in to the website, and it was created by Spencer Stallion of AB Web Design, who used to live in the village, and has continued to administer it since he left. The Parish Council has funded all the hosting and admin, although until recently the majority of the expenditure was covered by grants, as shown in the table below. 76% of the news items are from the Parish Council (some for the Village Hall, St. Mary’s, Open Gardens and Village Day). No new pages have been published by anyone apart from the Parish Clerk (and Cllr Moore on behalf of the Parish Meeting) since 2021.
In January 2016 the Council received a government grant of £650 for the website, as it had become compulsory for councils to publish their AGAR (Annual Governance and Accountability Return) and minutes on a website. At this stage Spencer started charging us the costs of the website and an admin fee. The grant covered the hosting costs for the website until it ran out in 2022/23.
| Year | Hosting (website and emails) | Domain | Admin | Other | Total not covered by grants |
| 2012/13 | £200 Set up | £200 | |||
| 2013/14 | £0 | ||||
| 2014/15 | £0 | ||||
| 2015/16 | £50 | £15 | £85 | £0 | |
| 2016/17 | £50 | £15 | £85 | £60 training | £145 |
| 2017/18 | No payment (see 2019/20) | £0 | |||
| 2028/19 | £50 | £15 | £85 | £85 | |
| 2019/20 | £100 (2 years payments) | £30 (2 years payments) | £170 | £170 | |
| 2020/21 | £50 | £15 | £85 | £800 Website Redesign (Covered by £700 grant from DCC) | £185 |
| 2021/22 | £50 | £15 | £85 | £85 | |
| 2022/23 | £50 | £15 | £85 | £100 | |
| 2023/24 | No payment (see 2024/25) | £0 | |||
| 2024/25 estimated | £140 (two years) | £39 (two years) | £200 (two years) | £379 (two years) |
As you will see the cost to us of the current arrangements has increased this year to £189.50, this was due to the hosting companies (and Spencer) increasing their prices. We have paid up to April 2025, and if we did move, we would not need to pay Spencer for the second year budgeted in this year’s costs.
I have contacted 7 companies so far who were on the SLCC website. I have heard back from 6 of them. The cheapest of them would register a .Gov domain for us for just £10 + VAT for the next 3 years (as £100 is covered by the grant). After that it would cost £30 + VAT a year, but we can change to a new registrar at any time. One company would charge £100 + VAT a year just for the domain. For comparison Spencer is currently charging us £19.50 per year for the Sticklepath.org domain, and does not charge VAT. However, on a Webinar about changing domains, it was recommended that the Council maintain the old domain indefinitely, forwarding emails and web traffic to the new one, in order to ensure that nobody hijacks the domain name and impersonates the Council. I have since got a comprehensive list of the suppliers who can obtain the grant and will contact others.
Spencer has confirmed that he would charge us an hourly rate for any time that he spent on changing the domain, emails, website etc. He considered that the Parish Council owned the website, however Emma believes that it is not owned by the Parish Council. It certainly appears that the Village Hall has a stake in it.
There are many different layers to changing the domain, and we can choose how far we go. All options would require further scrutiny, decisions and 3 quotes. I have not collated the responses from the suppliers yet. These are just indicative prices, and we have to juggle differences in the overall costs for domain, website hosting, emails, data and admin.
Option 1 – Register the Domain – Register ‘sticklepathparish.gov.uk’ for £10 for the next 3 years with parishcouncilwebsites.co.uk. This will involve filling in an eligibility questionnaire from the government and registering with the registrar. This would have to be completed and paid before the end of March 2025. After the 3 years we would not have to stay with the chosen registrar. There are actually choices of the domain name, which are outlined at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/choose-your-govuk-domain-name
Option 2 – Change over the emails – In addition to Option 1, we move the current emails to the .Gov domain. We could do this on StackMail with Spencer’s help, or we could start with a new provider. The provider does not have to be one of the recommended registrars, and will help with transfer but it may be complicated because we would be changing to a different domain too. I have experience of Zoho Mail which would cost around £150 for all our emails and data storage (replacing the £19.99 for OneDrive). We would still need to pay for StackMail to ensure that everything was forwarded to the new addresses, but that cost is included in the hosting costs. It is more economic to have the hosting and emails together.
Option 3 – Change over the website – In addition to Option 1 we move our existing website and emails to a new host. Most hosts will then include the emails as part of the hosting (as Spencer does). One provider (Cloud Next) quoted just £49.99 + VAT per year for hosting website and emails, and (if the village agreed) would transfer the existing website at no cost. They could also register the domain, but it would cost £50 + VAT per year. This means that if we chose Cloud Next to access our £100 voucher, we could have the emails, hosting and domain free for the first year. This would again need to be done asap. However, there would need to be some extensive re-organisation as a .Gov website must have the Parish Council at the heart of the front page, and although it can include information on the village, it must be subsidiary. I have asked the PCDHS whether we can charge the other village groups for pages on our website, they are checking the answer and I have a meeting booked with them tomorrow, so will be able to explain further at the Council meeting. For some overtime I could re-arrange the website, this would not be a full redesign.
Option 4 – Have a new website – In addition to Option 1 we have a new .gov website designed and hosted by a provider. We could decide whether this includes the other village stuff or whether we just keep it Parish Council and link to the old website for the other groups. If the latter, who would pay for the Sticklepath.org website? The new site would cost £569 + VAT with parishcouncilwebsites.co.uk, and then we would have their hosting fees of £262.20 per year (emails included) on top of that. Cloud Next do not do new websites. Other suppliers would only create them if we used their hosting. One company quoted over £1,000 for the first-year hosting, transfer and emails.
This report has not covered social media such as Facebook groups, as this was discussed at the council meeting in April 2024 as follows – “The Clerk had identified some online training which would be a good way to initiate a social media policy; however it was agreed that it was not urgent as there was no need for a Social Media policy unless the Council set up its own social media presence. It was agreed to add publicity from the website to the existing Sticklepath groups, but that no councillors should reply to comments except to say it would be referred to the Clerk for discussion at the next meeting.”
Proposals
Or
The Council go ahead with option 3, subject to other quotes.
Further Information:
Parish Council Domains Helper Service Information
Guide 1: Preparing for your move to .gov. uk.
shortlist of .gov. uk Approved Registrars.
www.parishcouncilwebsites.co.uk
Parish Clerk: Sally Fullwood, 5 Tor Down, Belstone, Okehampton, EX20 1QU
Tel: 01837 849131 Mobile: 07885 959554 Email: clerk@sticklepath.org