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UKVillages - No community exists in isolation Launched in April 2000, http://www.UKVillages.co.uk is now widely recognised as the national and local community website for the UK, providing a fully interactive home page and tailored portal for over 31761 villages, towns, cities and suburbs in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. One of the fundamental features of each of the UKVillages.co.uk home pages is that every community shares information with its neighbours - we strongly believe that no community exists in isolation, and the structure of UKVillages reflects this. UKVillages offers local people a means of sharing information and promoting their community and its activities and services to a wider audience, it allows tourists and visitors the chance to research trips and holidays around the UK, and gives businesses and organisations a unique opportunity to show how they support, and contribute to community life, at the same time as reinforcing their brand and key marketing messages. Independently owned and managed, The Sunday Times chose UKVillages as one of the Top 50 British Brands on-line. UKVillages.co.uk currently has 654,800 people visiting every month (October 07 figures). UKVillages won a prestigeous Government award for Bridging the Digital Divide with the Community Heritage Stores project http://www.localCHS.co.uk See what's new at UKVillages and on UKVillages - click here. How it works...  | Local contributions and a tailored portal
- Any individual, group, club, sports clubs, school, society or business can post a notice into their community - this is shown in all the neighbouring places in a four-mile radius - allowing wonderful free publicity in the local area. Notices are security checked, and individuals can only post to their own communities to maintain the 'integrity' of the community content. As of April 2006, over 88% of the 31761 communities have had locally posted notices.
- The tailored portal leads the site user to directly relevant local information on everything from the doctor's surgery, the cinema, train times, environmental hotspots, local government, inner city or local rural issues, old photos, entertainment, museums, etc
| | Sponsors and partners
UKVillages.co.uk generates revenue to continue to offer the invaluable free service to communities via partnerships with and sponsorship by community focused organisations such as Calor Gas, The Co-operative Group, The Cheshire Building Society, Shell Direct, DTI, DEFRA and many others. UKVillages.co.uk is working in partnership with both The Post Office (to provide an interactive home page for every sub-postmaster), and The Commission for Rural Communities. We are also working on a prestigeous e-Innovations project for ODPM with the Borough of Kings Lynn and West Norfolk - this is the Community Heritage Store initiative. Endorsed by NALC - we work with many parish councils and have conducted a survey about the role of the local parish council. We offer our partners and sponsors a direct route straight to local communities enabling very precise targeted messaging. UKVillages also works hard to ensure the relationships succeed both on and off line – putting the partner messages very much at the heart of the actual community – as well as its on-line counterpart. UKVillages has also carried out surveys on behalf of the Royal Horticultural Society and DEFRA. The UKVBroadbandPlace was launched in the Spring of 2004 and is funded by DTI/DEFRA Rural Broadband Team and offers links to local case studies on the benefits of broadband. We have also carried out projects on behalf of the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and GMTV.
UKVillages are a delivery partner in the East of England Parish Involve Project. UKVillages is also working with a number of County Councils (Devon, Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Cornwall, and Gloucestershire (see http://www.town2town.org.uk)) to provide better access to information and services at a really local level: whether in the area of key life issues or events, or promoting local government findings in the light of Foot and Mouth, the website provides an ideal way to communicate with the public as well as a means of getting feedback from them on local issues of importance.
UKVillages allows for the polling or surveying of opinion via national, regional and very local polls. So in terms of assessing the impact of a project on the local community, to reinforcing the brand of a national product, or gauging thoughts on topical issues, the website is an ideal vehicle to facilitate the gathering of information in either a qualitative or quantative format. | | Community content
UKVillages is in a unique position to be able to offer 'community content' to other organisations for either Internet or Intranet purposes | | Community champions – rural and urban and consultancy
UKVillages.co.uk has an ongoing relationship with various 'rural' bodies including DEFRA, The Countryside Agency, ACRE, RDAs, RCCs, The Commission for Rural Communities, The Plunkett Foundation, ViRSA, RuralNet|UK, and The Countryside Alliance. Independence is key, so UKVillages does not align itself to the specific beliefs of organisations, rather, the site offers, or facilitates, a forum for cooperation and communication. We do however believe in the importance of 'community' and recognise that we are able to offer support in reducing social exclusion and breaking down the barriers of rural isolation. | | Communication, dissemination and feedback
UKVillages provides an ideal vehicle by which to communicate with the public, in terms of interest groups, location etc, and this has been used to tremendous effect by organisations, and also in a recent survey of the websites rural users as to the relevance of the Internet to their community survival.
UKVillages.co.uk does much to support and encourage local tourism across the UK, the relationship we have with the British Tourist Authority means further promotion for the local organisations and event on UKVillages to a wider audience.
The on-line public seems to have taken UKVillages.co.uk to their hearts, and we have a very loyal user base, and our requested on-line newsletter Tittle Tattle goes out to just over 85,000 individuals every 6 weeks.
UKVillages is able to work in partnership with organisations towards specific projects. | | Corporate Social Responsibility
UKVillages.co.uk provides a means of both supporting and promoting community support and related projects. The Cheshire Building Society for example have benefited from involvement with UKVillages both on and off line, and supported some worthwhile projects locally thanks to the UKVillages.co.uk Community Kitty – we are also able to provide promotion for staff community involvement and other community support projects. We are also recognised by BiTC and HRH The Prince of Wales and the Pub is the Hub initiative. | | Other activities and promotion
UKVillages judges and presents the awards on behalf Calor for the prestigious Calor Village of the Year competition Information Technology category - this in the presence of HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH the Princess Royal, we also promote and support the wider competition across the website.
Channel 4 recommend us as a unique reference tool for researching and relocating new areas, and we are also being used as a holiday organising site within the UK, we have been widely featured across the media and local and national radio - including a recommendation by Terry Wogan.
UKVillages is promoted via relationships with local radio stations (with our own local information show on one!), in the national press, via PR, by partners and sponsors, government agencies, and on-line via links from thousands of other websites and extensive use of search engines... and importantly by word of mouth from users. |
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