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The Practitioners’ Guide 2025  has important updates in the ‘Digital and data compliance’ section. Your community expects you to have a trusted online presence so it is important that you act in line with the guidance. This article explains the things you need to do and shows you where to get support.

Emails

The Practitioners’ Guide now states that every authority must have a role-based email account hosted on an authority owned domain. For example, [email protected] or [email protected].

You must stop using personal email accounts, for example Gmail or other free addresses. When choosing a new email for your council, it is best practice to have a .gov.uk email address. This will mean your emails are easily recognised as coming from a legitimate government organisation. Using a .gov.uk email also means your communications are transparent and you will be able to respond to Data Subject Access and Freedom of Information requests.

Website

Parish councils are obliged to have a council owned website that complies with the accessibility guidelines. To help you maintain a consistent and professional image, the Practitioners’ Guide recommends councils use .gov.uk domains. Anyone visiting a .gov.uk website will know it is legitimate and can be trusted. This is increasingly important as cyber scams are on the rise. Moving to .gov.uk does not have to be a big change, in many cases you can keep your existing website and website provider.

Moving to .gov.uk

The Parish Council Domain Helper Service has helped over 1,000 parish councils move to a .gov.uk domain, and are on hand to help you take action. You can:

• Read guidance on moving your parish council to a .gov.uk domain on the .gov.uk website, to go through each step in the process, including how to write an accessibility statement and IT policy
• Sign up to a 60 minute virtual workshop, if you need more advice or have questions about moving to a .gov.uk domain
• Email [email protected] if you have any questions

The Parish Council Domains Helper Service Team, Government Digital Service (GDS)