DARWEN Town Council is to pay a web designer £500 to revamp its dated website.

Deputy chairman Coun Pete Hollings welcomed Phil Holden, owner of web design and IT services firm Fahrenheit 451, to the council’s meeting on Tuesday night.

Mr Holden told councillors how he could improve the website and make it more accessible for residents in Darwen.

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He said: “It looks like it is from the mid-90s. I looks like it has not been touched for 20 years. t is also not formatted for mobile use so if people look at it on a mobile phone or tablet as many people do these days, it just shrinks everything down.

“We can also link it up to Facebook or Twitter so things such as events are automatically uploaded straight away, which makes it easier for you to manage.”

Mr Holden showed prototypes of how the new pages he had already designed would look if the council was to give him the go-ahead and commission him for the job.

Coun Hollings said: “This could give people a lot more concise information about what is going on in the town.”

Coun Brian Taylor said: “I am worried about Facebook. There are a lot of people out there who could abuse it.”

Mr Holden explained: “It would only pull in information from the events page of your Facebook site, which is run by yourselves.

“You could also link it to pages of other organisations.

“People cannot just put anything they want on there without permission.”

Coun Dave Smith said: “One of our aims as a town council is to promote the town and bring it up to date and this is one way of doing that so I think it is a really good idea.”

Coun Paul Browne asked how much it would cost to run and Mr Holden said the initial cost would be £500, with the annual £70 cost for web hosting and the domain name.

He added: “I think that is good value for money.”

Councillors voted unanimously to redevelop and rebrand the website.