LocalGov Drupal

LocalGov Drupal is a community of developers, content designers and digital leaders from local councils across the UK.

What we do

We collaborate to develop a best practice, open source website publishing platform that is freely available to all UK councils.

We work together to improve our own websites, and to create public digital assets for the benefit of all.

Together we aim to create sector wide digital transformation by developing a shared pool of code, resources, research and expertise. 

Why we do it

We’re motivated by a desire to help councils deliver the best possible digital experience for citizens, and reduce the risks and costs associated with council websites. 

We take our inspiration from other code sharing organisations and initiatives and recognise that we are part of a wider international movement and community.

How we do it

We’re a community of experts, working together in an open and transparent way.

We pool skills, share knowledge, help one another and make collective decisions.

We want as many people as possible to benefit from this project. We welcome contributions in a variety of forms from inside and outside local government, building on the strength of open source communities both in the UK and beyond. Discover how you and your council team can participate.

Open Digital Cooperative

In January 2023 we established Open Digital Cooperative to help run, develop and ensure the financial sustainability of the Localgov Drupal project.

Councils and suppliers pay a subscription fee (voluntary for councils) to Open Digital Cooperative to keep our unique collaboration going.

LocalGov Drupal is not our registered name for two reasons. Firstly ‘Drupal’ is under a trademark. Secondly our cooperative has ambitions to provide open-source software to public sector bodies and third sector organisations outside of local government.

Previous funding

We have previously received funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

LocalGov Drupal was founded for the public good, so we will always:

  • publish our code and documentation freely under an open source licence (GPL2),
  • respond to pull requests from all of our users, whether they are members of LocalGov Drupal or not,
  • provide information to any public body or supplier wanting to find out more about our work.

Like all the best ideas, LocalGov Drupal started in the minds of a few individuals. It grew into what it is today through adoption by far-sighted councils open to collaboration, some central government funding and a lot of hard work. Read our story so far

From Drupal.org

LocalGov Drupal is a distribution and install profile built to help UK councils publish public facing websites quicker, cheaper and better.

It has been funded by:

It has been supported by:

Active development is currently on Github:

https://github.com/localgovdrupal/localgov

Drupal.org project at:

https://www.drupal.org/project/localgov

From LinkedIn

LocalGov Drupal is a publicly owned asset that delivers a better digital experience for citizens, improves service outcomes, and saves money. Our councils have followed the Local Digital Declaration to develop a shared pool of code, resources, research and expertise, delivering great digital experiences to citizens at a lower cost, while creating a publicly owned asset. LocalGov Drupal can reduce the cost of building a new council website by up to 80%. Learn more about the business case. It is built and maintained by a community of developers, content designers and digital leaders from local councils across the UK. Web teams love the freedom, flexibility and community. Find out more about the benefits for web teams. We’ve created a web publishing platform that can be customised and used for free by any local government organisation. It includes common publishing formats, with many inspired by GOV.UK. LocalGov Drupal is currently used by 16 English councils, and more are joining the project every month.

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