I said I’d report back and here are the results :
I received 16 replies. Thank you to those people that replied, it really helped !
Of those 16 replies, all 16 felt the website should continue so that’s what I will do.
Which rather suggests that I should invest some time in making it more “visible” so that people let me know of events etc. I’ll have a think about that.
An additional development
Whilst this was going on I also received an email from the Press Association.
It seems that there was a post on the website in 2017 where I was reminding people that the church was their polling station for the upcoming election. That post was illustrated with a picture of a ballot box. There were literally hundreds of similar images that Google returned but it seems that without realising I chose an image that was copyright.
I apologised and removed the post.
They came back to advise that I must buy a licence from them for £792.50 to compensate them.
I explained that the site was not commercial, non revenue generating (it actually costs me money to run it !), and really a public service site serving around 200 residents in a small village and that there were so many similar images that if I’d known it was copyright I’d simply have used another image. They’ve replied that lack of knowledge isn’t a valid legal defence…
I have to say that my view of the media wasn’t particularly positive to start with but now ?…
If anyone knows a copyright lawyer who could advise me I’d be grateful !
Hankerton Village 