Moving to LocalGov Drupal
Your council website should make life easier for residents. For too many councils it does the opposite — built on a proprietary platform that is expensive to maintain, difficult to update, and increasingly out of step with what residents expect.
LocalGov Drupal changes that. It is an open-source platform built by councils for councils, designed to deliver accessible, easy-to-manage websites at a fraction of the cost of traditional builds. And it is where we spend all of our time.
What is LocalGov Drupal?
LocalGov Drupal is a collaborative initiative involving councils and suppliers across the UK and Ireland. Rather than every council commissioning a bespoke website from scratch, councils share code, expertise, and research to build something better together.
The result is a platform that is:
- Accessible by default — WCAG 2.1 AA compliant and built to meet GDS standards
- Cost-effective — councils typically spend £70k–£150k on a new LocalGov Drupal site, compared to an average of £80k–£250k on proprietary platforms
- Quick to deploy — shared code means no duplication of effort; many projects complete in 8–12 weeks
- Easy to manage — content editors can update pages without relying on a developer
- Built to last — as more councils adopt the platform, it becomes more robust and better supported
Rohallion is a listed supplier in the LocalGov Drupal directory. We contribute actively to the open-source project — including our Elections module, which is used by councils across England.
What moving to LocalGov Drupal actually involves
Whether you are building a new council website or migrating from a legacy platform — Jadu, Umbraco, Sitecore, or anything else — the process follows a similar shape.
We start with your residents, not the technology. What do people come to your website to do? Where do they get stuck? What content needs to come across and what can be left behind? This discovery work, covered by our strategy and consultancy and content design capabilities, shapes everything that follows.
From there we move into build and migration — configuring LocalGov Drupal to your council's needs, migrating content, integrating third-party systems, and testing thoroughly before go-live. Our technical delivery team has handled migrations from a wide range of legacy platforms, and we have developed tooling that automates significant portions of content migration work, saving months of manual effort.
We also work closely with your internal team throughout. Most councils have editors and web officers who will be managing the site long after go-live. Training them well and making sure the editorial experience is intuitive is part of the job, not an afterthought.
The Rohallion team differs from other providers I've worked with because they listen and collaborate to find the right solution, not what's best for them. I'd highly recommend them to other councils as they already have the essential background knowledge of local government processes.
Chris McEwan
Web Development Specialist
Westmorland & Furness Council
Why work with Rohallion?
LocalGov Drupal has a growing supplier directory. Here is what distinguishes how we work.
We work with councils. We understand procurement timelines, accessibility obligations, the pressures of working across multi-disciplinary teams, and the reality of delivering digital services to every resident regardless of their digital confidence. That context shapes every project we take on.
We contribute to the community. Our founder chaired Drupal Scotland for 15 years. We sponsor LocalGov Drupal events. Our Elections module is open source and actively maintained. We are part of the community, not just a supplier to it.
We stay involved. Most of our council relationships are long-term. We are not a build-and-hand-over agency. After go-live we handle support, platform updates, accessibility audits, and ongoing development as your needs evolve.
Rohallion's responsiveness and reliability made them a safe pair of hands. They were always there when we needed them, and they gave us full confidence that they'd deliver to our spec and tight timeline. We're now working with them again on a new project.
Susannah Wintersgill
Director, Communications, Strategy and Insight
Oxfordshire County Council
Ready to start the conversation?
We are happy to talk through what a LocalGov Drupal project would look like for your council before any formal procurement process begins — including indicative timelines and what to expect at each stage.
