Elsewhere I’ve stated that some CC websites are ‘abominations’. While this is true, I’m embarrassed to say that none of the CC websites I run are perfect.

I used a questionnaire on the Communities, Parishes and Local Councils website to check them. Allowing for 20 of the 95 questions being irrelevant to CCs, because parish councils can do lots more than CCs, the scores are not what I want. CC names are disguised to avoid embarrassing them.

Fortunately, most of the issues are easily fixable. For example, the websites don’t give LA councillors’ surgeries and contact details. But the councillors are listed, so it should be trivial to make their names links to their websites, rather than copying data to the CC websites – that’s bound to lead to errors.

Others will take a little more work, such as writing privacy policies. (None of the websites are set to capture personal data except email addresses of subscribers.)

There are some I can’t do alone, such as writing histories of the areas. (I can get around that by linking to online histories, I think.) I can’t create registers of CC members’ interests without their willing input. Nor can I show who is on each subcommittee without getting that information from the CCs. Fortunately, as far as I know, two of the CCs only have planning subcommittees, while the third has four subcommittees with known convenors. Asking the convenors who is on their subcommittees should do the trick.

I haven’t been asked to do make the CC websites live up to CPALC’s tests, and so I doubt whether I will be paid for the extra work. CC members are volunteers, and I’m already under attack by an individual for being paid for my minuting and website work. Yet another ‘I don’t want to do this but I should do it’ call on my time. I guess I’ve just made another rod for my own back. Bah!