Colchester City Council replaced an outdated legacy website with a new site built on LocalGov Drupal.
The move has given residents a faster, more accessible experience and reduced the burden on the council's content team.
The team contributed custom features, developed during the project, back to the LocalGov Drupal community, making them available to other councils at no extra cost.
The challenge
Colchester City Council's website was built on an ageing platform. Maintaining it was difficult and costly. It did not meet modern accessibility standards, and residents found it hard to navigate. Content editors struggled to publish and update information quickly.
The council needed a modern, sustainable platform. It had to serve residents better and be simpler for staff to manage. It also had to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA standard.
Why LocalGov Drupal
Colchester City Council chose LocalGov Drupal because it was purpose-built for local government. The platform is developed collaboratively by councils and their suppliers. That means councils benefit from shared investment and do not pay to solve problems others have already solved.
The council also wanted to contribute, not just consume. LocalGov Drupal made that straightforward. Any custom work built for Colchester could be offered back to the community.
The solution
Colchester City Council worked with two specialist partners: The Confident and Code Enigma.
Code Enigma handled all the infrastructure (and helped with some technical aspects of the Drupal development). They set up a modern, portable hosting environment with separate development, staging, and live environments, built entirely on open source tools with no vendor lock-in. This gave the council a safe place to test changes before they reach residents, and a stack that they completely own. Code Enigma also built custom reports for deployments and other backend tasks, giving the council clear visibility of their site status at all times.
When a security release and a cyber attack occurred simultaneously during the project, the response was instant. The site remained secure and operational throughout.
The Confident led the broader design and development of the new site, building on LocalGov Drupal's shared components, while Code Enigma focused on some specific “back office” features.
Because LocalGov Drupal is based on the GOV.UK Design System, the visual language was already established. This meant the council did not need to invest heavily in design research from scratch.
Instead, the team drew inspiration from existing LocalGov Drupal sites — particularly Essex County Council and the Royal Borough of Greenwich — saving time and budget while producing a site that felt familiar and trustworthy to residents.
Bespoke work
Between them, Code Enigma and The Confident built several improvements specifically for Colchester, for example:
A custom content importer was created so the council's team could upload a spreadsheet of existing page addresses, map each one to the appropriate content category, and have everything imported automatically into a Drupal "workspace" for verification before publishing to the live site. This meant migration could happen quickly and in stages, with the content team in control throughout — rather than a high-risk, all-at-once switch.
The site's search was rebuilt with a dedicated search engine, giving residents faster, more relevant results.
A number of internal systems — including a jobs feed, a news feed, and a city map — were rebuilt into the site itself. Previously, these ran on separate third-party platforms, each with its own hosting and maintenance costs. Bringing them into LocalGov Drupal removed those costs entirely.
The site was built to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA. This makes it accessible to more residents, including those who use assistive technology. This led to several accessibility fixes being contributed back to LocalGov Drupal.
The team contributed an open-source module that automatically converts external links into embedded content. Any council can now use it at no cost.
Post-launch training
After launch, The Confident ran a mentoring programme for the council's internal staff. The team at Colchester can now manage and develop the site themselves, without depending on external support for day-to-day tasks.
Results
- The new site delivers clear benefits for Colchester City Council and its residents:
- Residents access services through a faster, more accessible website. The site meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA standards.
- Content editors publish and update information more easily.
- The council's ongoing maintenance costs have been reduced.
- The internal team can manage and grow the site independently.
- The council has full visibility of deployments and other backend tasks through custom infrastructure reports.
- Jobs, news, and city map services are now managed inside the site, with no extra hosting costs.
- A custom content importer gave the team full control over the migration, reducing risk.
- An improved search experience gives residents faster, more relevant results.
- The project's open-source contributions are available to the wider LocalGov Drupal community.