Council’s £80k website upgrade to save taxpayers £14k a year
FOI reveals staggering increase in hosting and maintenance fees which propelled cost-cutting rebuild
- Rebuild follows £33k upgrade two years ago
- Almost 5,000 web pages 're-written in plain English'
- Running costs rose by almost £6k between 2022 and 2024
It will take six years for Orkney Islands Council (OIC) to make its money back after investing nearly £80,000 in a new website.
The authority’s new-look orkney.gov.uk officially went live at the end of September, and is the first full rebuild of the website since its launch in 2001.
It is set to save the council approximately £14,000 annually on hosting and maintenance fees, plus almost £7,000 in the current year.
These savings have been described as “significant” by the council, which spent a total of £57,625 on hosting and maintenance fees for the website between 2022 and 2025.
Annual costs rose from £11,250 to £17,000 during that time.
These figures, alongside a £488.72 annual fee for a social media feed tool for the website, were shared with The Orcadian following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
Also disclosed was the total cost of this year’s £79,250 rebuild, as well as the total spent on a £33,695 upgrade two years ago.
After receiving the FOI response the newspaper asked OIC what the difference was between these two sizeable investments in its website.
A spokesman responded: “The 2024 upgrade involved migrating the website to a new Content Management System (Umbraco), as the previous platform had reached end of life. This ensured the website remained secure, supported and fit for continued use and on an updated platform.
“The 2026 upgrade delivered a completely redesigned website and a comprehensive review of its structure and content. The work was informed by user research, which found that 59 per cent of users were dissatisfied with the previous site, citing difficulties finding information, completing simple tasks and navigating council-focused content.
“Nearly 5,000 pages were reviewed, rewritten in plain English and reorganised around the tasks residents need to complete rather than council departments. The new site also introduced a postcode-based bin calendar, allowing residents to view collection days, set up email reminders and sync dates to their phone calendar. This was the most requested improvement identified through user feedback.
“The site structure was extensively tested with residents before launch, achieving a task success rate of 91.8 per cent, compared with an industry benchmark median of 62 per cent for local authority websites.
“The new website was also built to WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards.
“The new website provides a substantially enhanced user experience and improved accessibility, while also offering better value for money through reduced hosting and maintenance costs.”