Quorum is an open-source committee management system being developed by Chicken with the LocalGov Drupal community. It will help councils manage committees, meetings, agendas, minutes and decisions in one place, then publish them as structured, searchable and accessible content.
Because the code is open and council-controlled, councils can choose who hosts and supports it, adapt it to local needs and avoid being tied to one supplier.
Join the conversation about this project on Slack or email Aaron for an invite (councils only)
Project update: July 2026
The project has moved from discovery into a working build. Following around three months of research and input from several councils, Chicken has produced a detailed specification, clickable wireframes and a working Drupal prototype.
The prototype already connects core information about councillors, committees, meetings, forward plans, agenda items, decisions and registers of interests. The wireframes show how staff and residents could use the system, including browsing meetings and decisions, managing agendas and viewing accessible, searchable information.
This is still work in progress. The visual design has not yet been applied to the Drupal build, and some features are still being refined. The next phase will focus on aligning the build with the wireframes, finalising the acceptance criteria and inviting councils to help test the product.
- Explore the clickable prototype.
- View the working Drupal build (you will need an account).
We welcome feedback from Democratic Services teams, particularly on council workflows, essential features and anything we have missed.
Join the conversation about this project on Slack or email Aaron for an invite (councils only)
The problem we'll solve
Democratic Services teams are often expected to support open, accessible decision-making using systems that are expensive, inflexible and difficult to use. Agendas and decisions can end up buried in PDFs that are hard to search and difficult for screen reader users to navigate.
Work/Use case
As a Democratic Services officer
I need to manage committees, agendas, and meeting papers in one place
So that I can run transparent, efficient governance without being tied to a proprietary vendor
What the tool will do
The new governance system will cover everything a Democratic Services team needs to run committees and public meetings.
For staff:
- Create and manage committees, meetings, and a corporate calendar in a central workspace
- Build and publish agendas with automatic page numbering and itemisation
- Compile meeting packs and make changes without reprinting or redistributing papers
- Role-based access controls for restricted and exempt items
- Reusable templates for consistent agenda and minutes formatting
- Configurable workflows for report submission, review, approval, and publication
- Automatic email distribution of agenda packs to members and attendees
- Attendance recording and in-app voting for live and remote meetings
For members:
- Annotate documents
- Offline access to meeting papers
- Notifications for updates to meetings and committees
For residents:
- A public-facing portal for agendas, minutes, and decisions — using the council's own CSS and navigation, not a bolt-on portal
- Full-text search across committee records, designed to work with partial information
- Online petitions: submit, sign, track, and receive automated updates when thresholds are reached
There will be WCAG 2.2 AA compliance throughout.
More details on Chicken's website
Estimated time/ cost
If sufficient financial pledges are received, this project will be built by Chicken, Hammersmith & Fulham council's Drupal agency.
The Discovery phase is in progress, and has been funded by Hammersmith & Fulham.
The Core build will cost between £65k and £80k to include:
- committee and meeting management
- agenda and minutes workflow
- document pack compilation
- role-based access controls
- public-facing portal
- search and archive
- member registers
- data migration
Additional features can be scoped and funded separately by participating councils.
| Councils co-funding | Cost per council |
| 1 | £65,000 |
| 2 | ~ £21,700 |
| 3 | ~ £13,000 |
At five councils, each funder pays ~£13,000 — less than a single year’s licence fee with most proprietary suppliers, and at the end of it, every council owns the tool outright.
Tell us your needs
We are running a survey to find our what features councils need and how much further from the scoped work we need to go, if at all.
Fund this work
If you’re interested, please contact Will.