Our highlights from LocalGov Drupal Week 2025
Mike is Annertech's Director of Delivery, among other things. He joined Annertech in 2013, and has more than 25 years' experience in technical project management and consulting.
LocalGov Drupal Week 2025 was more than just another online conference; it was a powerful convergence of brilliant minds dedicated to public sector digital transformation.
Over five days, from 17 to 21 November 2025, the community delivered over 15 dynamic sessions, providing attendees with practical, real-life examples and hard-won insights straight from the trenches on exactly how the LocalGov Drupal (LGD) community is building the future of public services.
As one of the community’s leading partners and contributors – and a sponsor of LocalGov Drupal Week 2025! – we were particularly invested in the week’s discussions, which covered a variety of topics, from the future of the platform to critical content strategies.
Here are the sessions that stood out most for the Annertech team:
Transforming how we publish: The PDF importer project at Southwark Council
A bit about the session
Southwark Council and their partners demonstrated the massive progress on the PDF Importer project. This tool is designed to move councils away from simply uploading static PDF documents and towards converting that content into better, more accessible digital pages within LocalGov Drupal.
The team showed off their latest work, shared key learnings and detailed how the entire community can benefit from this open-source contribution.
Our thoughts
This was a great session. It’s exciting to see a practical solution to such a common problem in local government. I’m looking forward to getting hands-on with the importer to test its capabilities and see how it streamlines content migration for our clients.
While the long-term goal for all content strategists is to eliminate online PDFs, the reality is that they're still a convenient way to get print material online. The PDF Importer provides a crucial middle ground. It's a way to put print content online in a more structured, accessible digital format. While the resulting content may still need editing, it’s a huge efficiency win over copying and pasting from scratch.
Watch the session
LocalGov Drupal Missions 2026
A bit about the session
Will Callaghan, the LGD Product Lead, provided an insightful review of 2025's work, which included the necessary, unexpected effort on the Drupal 11 upgrade and moving the codebase to drupal.org. The core of the session focused on the future, proposing four key missions for 2026:
- Microsites: Enhancing the multi-site distribution with features like theme import/export and proper content workflows.
- Local Government Reorganisation: Addressing the needs of merging councils through tools for search, location-based content, and branding inheritance.
- Search: Delivering "best of breed" search tools, focusing on multi-site crawling (critical for Local Government Reorganisation) and implementing features like "Best bets".
- AI for Content Designers: Using AI to support human content designers, especially for style guide compliance checks and bulk actions, while ensuring data sovereignty.
Watch the session
AI Insights for Local Authority Websites: Lessons from 400 Council websites
A bit about the session
David Bishop from Digital Journey Coach shared the results of his AI-powered review service, which was designed to help local authority teams improve their digital services. Using generative AI, the project reviewed around 400 local authority websites against 12 key user journeys, from applying for school meals to reporting a missed bin. The resulting report offers a detailed, freely available overview of the current state of local government digital experience.
Our thoughts
I’ve been cautious about adopting AI in my professional life, but sessions like this are quickly changing my perspective, especially in the area of user experience. We often think we know our users, but this session gave a glimpse of what’s truly possible. Having AI reconstruct various complex user journeys and then flag inconsistencies and pain points is more than just a cool game; it's a highly effective way to uncover exactly where a council’s website is failing its residents.
Watch the session
Designing for LocalGov Drupal
A bit about the session
Mark Conroy of The Confident delivered a practical session on designing within the constraints of LocalGov Drupal.
By understanding the LGD's frontend system, basic style guide, and components, designers can create exceptional LGD websites faster, with greater scalability, and with minimal custom code.
This approach ensures sites automatically inherit updates and new features with little effort.
Our thoughts
The key takeaway here was the paramount importance of understanding the LGD's constraints. This ensures the design process shares a common language with the development reality. Slogans like 'Keep It Simple Superhero' (my personal favourite) and 'Less is More' should be framed posters for every designer. It serves as a necessary reminder of the dangers of designing with a 'go wild' attitude. My only surprise was the lack of a fully up-to-date Figma template system; that would be the ideal starting point for any LGD design project.
Watch the session
Beyond Translation: Effective Multilingual LocalGov Drupal in Practice
A bit about the session
When Annertech brought LocalGov Drupal to Ireland, support for the Irish language was a legal necessity, and the initial Irish language translations feature was funded by Tipperary County Council.
Annertech Frontend Developer and LocalGov Drupal lead developer Tony Barker demonstrated how multilingualism is handled in LGD for both council teams and citizens.
The session showcased Drupal's strong internationalisation capabilities, explored third-party tools/overlays and AI translations, highlighted the need for human oversight, and gave us a glimpse into a multilingual future.
Our thoughts
Bringing LocalGov Drupal to Ireland highlighted immediately that multilingual support isn't a 'nice to have', it's a fundamental requirement for public services. Tony's work shows how we can meet these legal obligations while still benefiting from the LGD's shared-code, cost-saving model.
Multilingualism is technically complex; it goes far beyond a simple text-string translation. What the LocalGov Multilingual module achieves is a truly robust feature, ensuring a seamless and reliable experience for all citizens, regardless of their native language.
Watch the session
Getting your content foundations built to support LGD migration
A bit about the session
Jayvik Patel from Luton Council led a session focused on the practical content design and strategy involved in a LocalGov Drupal migration.
He shared his team's methodical approach to a content audit, how they used a prioritisation matrix, and how they leveraged analytics to shape the new information architecture.
Crucially, the session highlighted the importance of securing buy-in from service teams and setting up effective governance for sustainable, user-centred content management.
Our thoughts
I thought this was a super insight into the content process for both a site moving to LGD and the subsequent management of content by a local authority’s digital team. Key for me was his focus on outreach – working proactively with colleagues from individual services to move towards the content they want. Reaching out to meet and talk through a requested change, rather than just processing a ticket, is a powerful way to remove barriers, build trust and ensure the content changes are accurate and intentional.
Watch the session
Looking ahead
LocalGov Drupal Week 2025 reinforced the value of this thriving community. From tackling the complexity of multilingual sites to planning for the disruptive change of Local Government Reorganisation, the LGD distribution is proving itself to be the most adaptive and forward-thinking solution for local government.
We were particularly energised by the focus on the 2026 missions, especially the exploration of AI and the commitment to solving the ubiquitous search problem, and we look forward to contributing to these core areas in the year ahead.
Mike is Annertech's Director of Delivery, among other things. He joined Annertech in 2013, and has more than 25 years' experience in technical project management and consulting.
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