Five Cumbrian Parish and Town Council Websites — Three Builds, One Local Agency

The Millom Without Parish Council site had originally been built and maintained by a councillor who had the technical skills to manage it. When that councillor withdrew their maintenance services, access to the site was handed over — but the councillor who took on responsibility was not a web developer. The site continued to run, but when the council moved to meet 2025 requirements, the document archive could no longer be managed correctly. Documents were not being published in the right format, not named to the correct convention, and not made accessible in the way the Transparency Code requires.

The rebuild addressed all of this. Every legally required document had to be located from source, assessed for completeness, checked against Transparency Code requirements, renamed to the correct naming convention, converted to HTML, and published correctly. One document at a time, from scratch — a substantial piece of work requiring careful attention to what had been published, what was missing, and what needed to be corrected before it could be re-published in compliant form.

The rebuilt Millom Without site at millomwithoutparishcouncil.gov.uk is now one of the most publicly engaged council sites in our portfolio — a regular Out and About newsletter, an active news section, and a complete, correctly structured, fully searchable document archive with single-click access to every legally required document type from every page on the site. Every document is readable as an HTML page. What was a compliance problem is now a compliance exemplar for Cumbrian parish councils.

Millom Town Council commissioned a full rebuild ahead of the Assertion 10 compliance deadline. Like all five council builds in this portfolio, the project involved extensive work making legacy documents Assertion 10 compliant — checking every document in the existing archive, correcting naming conventions, converting to HTML-readable format, and publishing in a properly structured, accessible way. This was a full build with a complete document reconstruction, not a cosmetic refresh of an existing site.

In addition to the compliance rebuild, Millom Town Council has the most advanced document management workflow of any council we work with. The clerk uses a bespoke desktop application built specifically for this purpose. The clerk drops a document into the app — the AI system reads it, checks it for correct document type, meeting date, council name, and naming convention, renames it correctly, generates a structured HTML page, and creates a draft. The clerk receives an alert, reviews the draft, makes any changes, and clicks to publish. The document is live — correctly named, HTML-readable, and fully searchable — without developer involvement and without requiring any technical knowledge from the clerk.

For Eskdale, Bootle, and Whicham the same AI document workflow runs via email rather than a desktop application — the clerk emails documents to us, we run them through the system, and publish on their behalf. The output across all five sites is identical: correctly named, accessible HTML pages, searchable by content, with single-click access to every document type. Millom Town Council at millomtowncouncil.uk is an active and publicly engaged council — high volume of notices, newsletters, and formal council documents published consistently throughout the year.

If your Cumbrian parish or town council needs a website rebuild, a compliance audit, or a document management system, contact us. We are based in Millom and we have delivered more compliant council websites in South and West Cumbria than any other agency. Whicham Parish Council also commissioned a second piece of work alongside the website rebuild — a bespoke Motorhome Booking plugin integrated directly into the council site to manage the Silecroft Beach car park. Visitors book motorhome pitches directly through the council website. Bookings, payments, and availability are managed by the council from the same WordPress admin they use for council documents and news. No third-party booking platform, no commission on bookings, no separate system to log into. Document management for Whicham runs via the email workflow — the clerk emails documents, we run them through the AI system and publish. Every required document is one click away from anywhere on the site. The site at whichamparishcouncil.org.uk is WCAG 2.2 AA compliant, legally complete, and handles both the council's transparency obligations and the practical management of Silecroft Beach.