Website Maintenance Service 2023-24

FY 2023-24 LALC Website Maintenance Service (WMS)

LALC are now into the third iteration of the WMS for the FY 2023-24. The LALC Webmaster providing the service is only allowed to work on LCC-provided Parish Council websites if the Parish Council has subscribed to the Premium option of the WMS. If your Parish Council would like to consider subscribing to the scheme, the WMS for Financial Year (FY) 2023-24 is as follows:

Premium option.

The Parish Council can pre-purchase any of the following options –

5 hours of work at a cost of £85 plus VAT 10 hours of work at a cost of £170 plus VAT 20 hours of work at a cost of £340 plus VAT

(These prices are doubled if the Parish Council is not a subscribed member of LALC).

There is no advantage purchasing one package over another as they are all based on the same hourly rate of £17 per hour. If the Parish Council runs out of hours before the end of the FY, then further hours can be purchased. At the end of the FY, if the Parish Council has time remaining from their purchased hours, a maximum of 5 hours may be carried over into the new FY so there is no wastage.

This service enables the Webmaster to work on your website under your guidance and requirements; you remain solely responsible for the layout of the website and its content so that you know what’s on there at all times – the Webmaster is just the enabler. The Premium service also allows you to receive unlimited advice, documents, Zoom/Skype and telephone calls should you need to discuss something. Work performed includes adding agendas, minutes, financial documents and policies, local activities, news events plus resetting the entire website layout, in part or in full, if that is your requirement; the Webmaster will perform the work that you want performed.

The good thing about this part of the service is that you buy the hours needed rather than have an hourly rate and the Webmaster will do anything to the website that is required by you; you remain completely in control.

An added bonus of this service is that all documents and e-mails sent to the Webmaster are saved to the Webmaster’s computer and this in turn is backed-up to an external Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive in the

Webmaster’s home. This has proven useful when entire archives of documents have been accidentally deleted so the Webmaster can usually have the website back in full operation very quickly. The NAS drive is not accessible via the Internet for security reasons.

Basic option.

This service allows you to receive advice, documents, Zoom/Skype and telephone calls should you need to discuss something before it’s added to the site but the calls are officially limited to 15mins per month. However, this service does not allow the Webmaster to work on the website. This service remains at £50 plus VAT for the FY.

The Service Level Agreement between LALC and the subscribing Parish Council states that all documents will be uploaded to the website within 48hours; in practice, most are uploaded to the website on the same day, or at least within 24 hours, from receipt of the request.

If your PC would like to sign up to any of these services, please liaise with LALC on 01673 866596 or e-mail to enquiries@lalc.co.uk. The Webmaster will be informed when the Parish Council website is to be added to the list and then you can start using the service as soon as the invoice is issued.

However, if you consider that the WMS is not for you and that training would suffice, here are details of the training that is available to you via LALC:

LCC Websites JADU Basics 1000 to 1600 (6 hours)

Maximum of 10 participants per course

This course is designed to provide information to personnel who have a limited or no knowledge of maintaining an LCC website using JADU Continuum. It teaches attendees the basic operation of these areas and in this order:

Homepage Banners

Events

News

Announcements

Downloads

Homepages

Document Pages

The course takes into account legal requirements under the Transparency Code as well as The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018. Questions may be asked throughout the duration and there will also be a Q&A session at the end.

LCC Websites JADU Advanced 1000 to 1230 (2hrs 30mins)

Maximum of 10 participants per course

This course is designed to provide information to personnel who have been maintaining their website but find there are other things they may wish to do but don’t know how to. The Course Instructor will ask attendees a week in advance to submit their requests for topics to be taught. The instructor will then create a Schedule of Topics to be taught and will send that to all participants the day before the course. Questions may be asked throughout the duration and there will also be a Q&A session at the end.

Course dates are scheduled by LALC so keep an eye out for the weekly E-News where details will be published. Course places are filled on a first come, first served basis.

One-to-One Training

One-to-one training via Skype is available and the Parish Council does not have to be a subscribed member of the WMS. The time period that courses can be available is between 1000hrs to 1700hrs weekdays only and the duration is as-required by the student. The instructor shares his screen to the student and teaches at a pace set by the student so that notes may be taken wherever needed.

The cost for the FY 2023-24 is £17 per hour, or part thereof, plus VAT.

(This price is doubled if the Parish Council is not a subscribed member of LALC).

Whilst the date and time of any training is arranged between the Instructor and the Student, all financial arrangements are conducted via LALC; the Instructor will not participate in financial arrangements.

For more information on any of the above, please contact LALC on 01673 866596 or send an e-mail to enquiries@lalc.co.uk