Intelligent Website Design and Development

Political Parties

In 2001, Tim Prater acted as volunteer webmaster for Bedford Liberal Democrats, and rewrote their website to support their local campaigning, including tools to engage, inform and recruit new members of the party.

The site created some interest from other Liberal Democrat local parties and organisations who asked Tim to produce sites for them as well based on the same principles: sites with a clear campaigning identity that were simple to update and easy to use, and worked together to share content such as photos between them, giving the Lib Dems an "economy of scale" for online campaigning.

As more sites asked to use the service, Tim approached Matt Raines, a specialist developer who he had previously worked with. That conversation and the need for a scalable, hosted solution to support a large number of campaign web sites was the genesis of the Lib Dem "Foci" site service, which was launched in 2003, and was replaced by the "Foci2" service in 2010.

The Foci2 service is now used by hundreds of Liberal Democrat sites across the country - from MPs to MEPs, local parties to party campaign organisations, Council Groups, Regions and the Welsh Liberal Democrats. A version of the same system is also being used by the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, with whom Prater Raines have worked since 2005.

Prater Raines believe passionately in the liberal message, and do not work for other UK political parties.

Tim Prater has been a member of the Liberal Democrats since 1991 and active in the Party since then, at different times campaigning in elections, Chair of the Youth and Student wing (LDYS), Chair of the Agents Association, as a member of party staff, as a Councillor at Parish, Town, District and County levels and more.