The Challenge
Sunninghill & Ascot Parish Council has served its community since 1894, covering the villages of Cheapside, South Ascot, Sunninghill, and Ascot. Like many parish councils, they had a website that had grown organically over time – functional, but struggling to keep pace with what residents actually needed from it.
When they came to us, they were clear about what wasn’t working:
Too much buried below the fold. Important information was hidden further down the page, and residents simply weren’t scrolling to find it. The workaround – cramming more and more into the top navigation bar – had made the site feel cluttered and hard to navigate.
Events were hard to promote. The council runs popular community events including the biennial Sunninghill Street Fayre and Party in the Park. Getting event information prominent on the homepage was a manual struggle every time, and the pages themselves felt flat.
A fragile, frustrating setup with their page builder. The team had been using Elementor to create more visually engaging event pages, but their previous hosting provider had a difficult relationship with the plugin. Every platform update risked breaking those pages and requiring time-consuming restoration – a recurring headache.
No flexibility in page layouts. One size didn’t fit all. Different types of content – a community event, a planning notice, a support hub – deserved different presentations, and the old system couldn’t accommodate that.
Our Approach
We started by listening. The council didn’t want a rebrand – they already had a clear identity. What they needed was a platform that could actually showcase what makes Sunninghill & Ascot a vibrant, well-run community.
We rebuilt the site on a stable, modern WordPress foundation with full page-builder flexibility – meaning the team can now design each page to suit its content, not the other way around. No more fighting the platform.
Key improvements we delivered:
- A visual, above-the-fold homepage that surfaces the most important content, upcoming meetings, latest news, and community events, without requiring residents to dig for it
- A clean, uncluttered navigation structured around the council’s four main areas: Council, Parish, News, and Community
- Flexible event pages that can be designed to feel distinctive and engaging for each event, with no risk of updates wiping out the work
- A latest news section that keeps the homepage feeling current and alive
- An accessibility toolbar built in from the start, reflecting the council’s duty to serve all residents
Easy Content Management - No Technical Skills Required
One of the most practical improvements we made was ensuring the council’s team can keep the site up to date themselves, without needing a web editor or specialist knowledge.
Parish councils have a legal obligation to publish a wide range of documents – agendas, minutes, financial reports, and policies – often on a regular cycle. On the old site, uploading these could be cumbersome. Now, documents can be uploaded and published quickly and simply, through a straightforward interface that doesn’t require any page-editing skills. The right document ends up in the right place, every time.
The same principle applies to councillor information. Membership of a parish council changes – people join, step down, take on new committee roles, or update their personal statements. The new site makes it easy to keep councillor biographies, photos, and committee responsibilities accurate and current, without having to touch the wider page design. For a council that prides itself on transparency and accountability, this matters.
The Result
The council now has a website that genuinely reflects the community it serves – visual, clear, and easy to update without technical headaches.
The team can promote events with confidence, keep residents informed, and manage the site themselves without being at the mercy of a platform that worked against them.
In their own words: “We are really pleased with the website and thank you for your patience.”
Why Parish Councils Deserve Better
Parish councils are often poorly served by the web design industry. Most providers in this space offer off-the-shelf, templated solutions built for compliance rather than communication – sites that tick the legal boxes but do little to reflect the character of the community they represent, or to make life easier for the people running them.
Every parish council is different. The size of the community, the events they run, the facilities they manage, the way they want to communicate with residents – all of it varies. A generic solution rarely fits well, and councils often end up working around their website rather than with it.
We take a different approach. We take the time to understand what each council actually needs then build something tailored to that, on a platform they can genuinely manage themselves.
If your parish council is ready for a website that works as hard as you do, we’d love to talk.
