There are many urban villages in London, some old, some newer like West Ealing, where there is a good community site run by local residents.  West Ealing Neighbours is run by a residents association who aim to stick up for their patch.  So like a traditional RA there is a constitution of sorts.  As well as over 200 news articles, the site has covered specific campaigns, such as the West London Tram.  And a handy little forum. For the technically minded it has a set of how to documents.

Wirksworth is a Derbyshire town with a good community based magazine style website with a simple discussion forum attached.  Wirksworth.net is nicely executed by a local group of volunteers in a not for profit company.  The site integrates video from youtube, photos from flickr and a feed from the forum.  The forum is a simple vbulletin, but the site itself deserves recognition for a hand drafted content management system, rather than doing it the easy way in hosted typepad, wordpress or blogger.

The ’second highest village in Shropshire’ has a nice combination of a blog and a well executed traditional static site with the majority of content.  I like the fact that it is the Parish Council running the site – a far more effective way of communicating about local issues than the traditional parish newsletter.   The combined sites are a wonderful resource for  parish with only 500-odd residents.  There is an interesting contrast to draw with Sean Brady an individual Parish Councillor with a very good blog in Formby.

There is a really good debate running here about a new visitor centre for a local beauty spot.  As you follow the thread you can see tensions  with an equally good, but campaign driven neighbouring site for the Friends of the Wrekin.  I don’t have  a view on the merits of the argument,  but it is great to see such a lively debate going on about an important issue on two hyperlocal websites – much better than a traditional council driven consultation or the argument happening behind the scenes or in meetings hardly anyone goes to.  The post on deer poaching from last summer caught my eye – blogging is often wrongly seen as an urban activity.