A TECH-SAVVY dad has revamped a parish council’s website, saving it more than £1,000 a year.

Blackbird Leys Parish Council used to pay £1,200 a year to maintain a site, and has had five different sites since it first logged on in 2002.

But after concerns were raised about the cost, a new councillor has stepped in and reduced the cost to just £9.99 a month.

Parish councillor Daniel Jones called for groups to get more help to establish themselves on the net.

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The stay-at-home-dad of three, said he wanted to get more, younger residents engaging with the council.

The 39-year-old, who joined the council just five months ago, said: “We’re looking to have more of an online presence.

“The majority of parish councillors are over 60, so I’m comparatively young, and the majority of councils don’t have the knowledge to set something like this up.

“Most could probably benefit from some kind of central government fund towards it.”

The council’s previous online presence was a single-page blog – leysonline.net, which the council was paying a contractor to run.

It launched its first website in 2002, and relaunched it three times since then.

Mr Jones, who lives with partner Amy Pearce in Firs Meadow, has designed websites before for a start-up business.

The new parish council site now has a news section for local businesses and groups to contribute to.It also includes a full list of councillors’ detail.

Mr Jones has also set up a council Twitter account, which already has more than 500 followers after just two months.

He also hopes to set up a council a Facebook page.

The website became the subject of an argument at council in August when chairman Gordon Roper questioned the parish council forking out £1,200 from its budget for its maintenance, saying the council got “nothing” from it.

Mr Jones’ site costs the council £9.99 a month for a domain name and it is getting on average 80 hits a month.

He said: “I don’t know about those other websites, but I looked at what we had and thought I could do better for free.

“We want the council to be able to engage with residents, but also for the residents to be able to get their information out there using our news page.

“It will help small businesses and community groups that can’t afford to advertise.”

Mr Roper added: “We asked him to do it and he has done a brilliant job. We’ve always wanted a website, but different people were doing it and it just sort-of disappeared and started again.

“This will let people on the estate know what’s going on, give them a way to contact us, and if there are clubs we can put their events on it.”

The site is blackbirdleysparishcouncil.gov.uk and Mr Jones is still adding improvements.

 

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