The days of running a Parish Council from a Gmail account are numbered, and if yours still does, it’s time to understand what that’s quietly costing you.
Is your email address undermining your authority?
Imagine a resident receiving an email about a planning consultation or an upcoming public meeting. The sender? clerk123@gmail.com.
They squint at the screen, unsure whether it’s legitimate. Maybe they flag it as spam, or they just ignore it. Either way, the council never hears back, and nobody quite knows why engagement is so low.
This scenario is playing out in Parish and Town Councils across England every single week. While it might seem like a small, administrative detail, the email address your council uses to communicate is sending a very loud message, whether you intend it to or not.
What the “Trust Factor” actually means
Residents are savvier than ever about online scams, phishing emails, and fraudulent communications. They’ve been told by banks, government campaigns, and consumer advice organisations to look carefully at who is actually contacting them before they click anything or share any information.
When an email lands in their inbox from a Gmail or Hotmail address, even a well-meaning resident will hesitate.
It just doesn’t look or feel official, and in an age where public trust in institutions is already fragile, that moment of hesitation matters more than you might think. A .gov.uk email address carries instant credibility.
It signals that your council is a verified, legitimate public body. Residents recognise the .gov.uk domain from HMRC, from the NHS, and from other government services they already trust.
When they see it attached to your clerk’s name, the psychological effect is immediate. It says, “This is real, this is safe, this is worth engaging with.”
That’s the Trust Factor, and it cannot be underestimated when you’re trying to encourage residents to participate in consultations, attend meetings, or simply feel connected to their local council.
Auditors are taking this seriously
It isn’t just about perception anymore. The use of personal email accounts for official council business is increasingly appearing on auditors’ radar as a genuine governance concern, and in some cases, it’s being flagged as a “High Risk” failure.
The reasons are practical and well-founded. When council business is conducted through a personal email account, that data sits on servers controlled by a private technology company, outside the council’s control.
If a clerk leaves and takes their personal account with them, correspondence, decisions, and communication records can disappear overnight. There is no organisational continuity, no audit trail, and no way to ensure that your council's Freedom of Information obligations are being properly met.
The Accounts and Audit regulations and the broader framework of Local Council transparency obligations all require that councils maintain proper records of their activities. Using a personal email account makes that significantly harder to demonstrate, and auditors reviewing internal controls are increasingly noting it as a weakness that needs to be addressed.
In short, what might have seemed like a pragmatic, cost-saving workaround a few years ago now represents a real governance risk. Fortunately, the cost of putting it right has never been lower.
What a .gov.uk address actually involves.
For many councils, the hesitation has come from uncertainty about what getting a .gov.uk domain actually means in practice. Fortunately, you can read our in-depth guide on obtaining a .gov.uk domain and .gov.uk email addresses.
We know it can seem really daunting, the prospect of applying, implementing and renewing a .gov.uk domain. Many councils start the process and stall somewhere in the middle.
Although that’s entirely understandable, it’s no longer a good enough reason to go without.
HugoFox can help with a free .gov.uk domain forever
We’re here to help. Having spent a long time working with Parish and Town Councils, we understand that the barrier to getting a .gov.uk domain isn’t really the cost or even the desire; it’s the time, the process, and the worry about managing something new.
So we’ve made it as simple as possible. We provide free .gov.uk domains to every Parish and Town Council we work with, and we mean genuinely free forever.
No setup fees, no annual renewal charges, no hidden costs buried in the small print. Just a proper, professional .gov.uk domain for your council, at no cost to your precept.
More importantly, we take care of everything. The application process, setup, technical configuration, and renewals are all handled by our team of experts on your behalf.
You don’t need to understand the technical side of how it all works, or log in to any portals or keep track of annual renewal dates. We manage it all, so your clerk can focus on the tasks that actually require a human.
When you move your council’s communications to a .gov.uk domain through HugoFox, you get the credibility, the governance compliance, and the peace of mind without any of the administrative burden.
If your council is still operating from a personal email address, this is the year to change that. We’re here to make sure it’s easy for you to do so. Contact our team to find out more.
We can’t wait to help your council take this next step.