Why have a website?

Get your own website and see the difference. As a Community Group, you serve the local community and this probably involves sending newsletters, canvassing and campaigning on local issues, meeting with local people, setting up forums and discussions on important topics, distributing important information and answering questions from your community.

Save time and money

Having your own website could make it easier and cheaper for you to communicate with your local community and to get feedback and valuable information from them in return. It could free up your valuable time and local resources.

Publishing on your website is instant so you can make available minutes of meetings, agendas, large public documents, anything you would normally have to print and post. You can also change, delete or add to anything that you publish on your site at a moment’s notice, depending on your own skills or the way your internet service provider operates.

The good news is that you don’t have to be a techie to make it happen. With the right type of website service you can set up and run a successful website with no technical or Internet expertise.

We never close

You can make useful and important information easily available to your community whenever they choose to view it.

There are a whole host of things you can do with a website including:

• Make information and services available to your community at any time — if someone in your community needs some information outside of office hours they can find everything they need on your site
• Allow community members to contact you via the website whenever they wish — you can set up contact forms whichwill collect information from people and send it to the appropriate person in your organisation
• Publish and send out regular newsletters via email at no postal cost and no more effort in writing than you need now
• Encourage participation by allowing people to contribute
• Hold instant surveys and polls to gather useful information
• Use the site to fundraise and campaign on local issues
• Publish photos of local events and activities
• Publicise up coming local news, events and happenings in the community
• Allow people access to reports, forms, job applications, etc, whenever they like

Meet people's expectations

As local and national government services become increasingly available on the Internet, your own community will begin to demand the same level of access from you. Most of your community will now have access to the Internet. Be ahead of the game and get your website up and running before they ask.

Some practical examples

Save time, increase efficiency, make life easier - Hook Parish Council, Hampshire

As part of their website, Hook provided a discussion forum for councillors ahead of their council meetings. By posting the agenda on the website, councillors were better informed before the meeting and the council reported shortened meeting times as a result.

Making life easier for Parish Clerks - From a Parish Clerk in Surrey

“Time spent on the website has really paid off. I used to spend a vast amount of time compiling the list of local businesses for the annual Town Guide. Now, with the online business directory I created on the website it takes a matter of minutes”

How the online business directory works

• Business details are entered into the directory on the website
• Businesses themselves check and amend their details throughout the year
• When it is time to print the annual guide the accurate list can be simply emailed to the printers

The World Wide Web is here — join in and get the benefits

More and more people are using the Internet and using it to do business with the public sector. In a rural county like Norfolk 73% of people have access at home or work and 48% use it weekly. There will be a major campaign in 2006 to get people using local government services online.

There is lots of information you can find from trusted official sources and you can access services on behalf of your members and constituents from local and central government without phoning round to try and find the person you want (helpful hint – you can make a note of web pages you use often). There are also very useful sites run by bodies like the BBC and local newspapers which provide high quality information that is relevant to you.

Email is often a quicker and easier way to communicate with other public bodies than letters or phone calls. Local councils are supposed to reply to all emails within a day and officers can pick up your message when they are next in the office if they are not at their desk when you want to communicate with them.

There are lots more things you can do like shopping from stores all over the world, getting radio programmes, music, images and documents downloaded onto your computer from all over the world, “chat” to friends across the world in real time – even make telephone calls which are virtually free.

The only real way to see what the Internet can do is to try it for yourself. Most public libraries have free Internet access and staff who are trained to be able to help you get started and explore what is available. There are also many courses available to develop your knowledge and skills