Personal Website

What is it?

Councils have an obligation to provide their Councillors with the option to maintain their own websites for Community Leadership purposes.

Why bother with it?

On the one hand this is a public place that Councillors can use to explain their role and talk about what matters in the local community. On the other hand councils often place restrictions on what Councillors can say on their websites. Councillors, for example, are typically not allowed to be political because the website is funded by the Council. As a result many Councillors do not take option made available to them.

Some Councllors maintain their own websites outside of the Council website. It is not expensive to buy a domain name and web space is typically available cheaply from a varity of service providers. The websites can then be used for a , for example, explaing the Councillors political views, promoting local events and providing links to local community groups, etc. The real cost of these is the cost of promoting the website to the public, keeping the website up to date and ensuring that links are live and that information does not go out of date. As a consequence many councillor prefer to blog.

Where can I find out more about it?

Sunderland City Council provides the CouncillorWeb service to its Councillors - but the service can be extended to other North East Councils. The Councillor.info Project is another example of a service that some of the councils in the North East use..