Prater Raines

15/03/2026

Congratulations to Verity, the winner of Cat Flap in our Lib Dem Lift-Off competition.

14/03/2026

The cat is in charge.

Win Cat Flap (the Liberal Democat). Top score at noon Sunday scoops the kitty.

flappy.praterraines.co.uk

14/03/2026

Hello Lib Dem conference! We're in the exhibition today until 6pm for all your Fleet support needs!

Drop by our stand 2 in the front exhibition area (by the main doors) - we're running a help surgery for site admins and the doctor is in!

13/03/2026

We have a Lib Dem Lift-Off prize.

Cat Flap.

Every home needs a Cat Flap. Cat Flap will go home with the holder of the top score of Lib Dem Lift-Off at noon on Sunday 15th.

flappy.praterraines.co.uk

13/03/2026

How far can you flap through an election campaign?

We love to bring a game to conference, and this time is no exception!

Lib Dem Lift Off is now live, and you can play on our stand 2 at York Conference over the weekend, or even online via your own device in your own time!

The player with the highest score at noon on Sunday 15th March will get a little prize: beyond the satisfaction of seeing your name at the top of the leaderboard!

https://flappy.praterraines.co.uk/

13/03/2026

We're on our way to York now. See you from 4.30 in the exhibition!

At York Liberal Democrats Conference 2026 we’ll be on stand 2 in the exhibition area (as you walk in through bag check, we’re the first stall to the right). We hope to see you there!

The Prater Raines team be available to answer questions and offer support on Lighthouse and especially Fleet. This includes getting your organisation website up and running as part of the Fleet.

The exhibition will be open (so we’ll be on our stand) at the following times:

Friday 13 March 16.30 - 18.15

Saturday 14 March 09.00 – 18.00

Sunday 15 March 09.00 – 13.00

If you are wondering what Fleet is, or who we are, an explainer. Nationally the Lib Dems offer a suite of online campaigning tools detailed at https://tech.libdems.org.uk/ They range from Lighthouse (where you can manage your local party membership and local party), to Targeted Email (letting you email all email contacts, like members, supporters and subscribers), Connect itself (recording voter data), and Fleet – the Party designed and approved website system.

We at Prater Raines develop and support the website platform Fleet. We’ve been supporting the Lib Dems online for over 25 years (we know, we don’t look old enough).

If you are not already using Fleet, we’d love to explain the system, how it works, and how it could improve your digital campaigning. It is the only website system endorsed by the Lib Dems. It is integrated into their other tools like Lighthouse (also developed by Prater Raines) and Connect, and supported through the Party’s central support channels.

If you are going to be at Federal Conference in March, we could chat there. We will be at York conference on stand 2 (as you walk in through bag check, we’re the first stall to the right): just drop by our stall, and we’ll show you around the Fleet.

Alternatively fill out this register of interest form https://tech.libdems.org.uk/signup and we can make sure you are sent more details to consider with the rest of your local party.

There are currently over 350 Fleet sites, including Federal, MPs and AO's. Over 80% of local parties use Fleet too. We’d love to help your local party get onboard too.

09/03/2026

At York Liberal Democrats Conference 2026 we’ll be on stand 2 in the exhibition area (as you walk in through bag check, we’re the first stall to the right). We hope to see you there!

The Prater Raines team be available to answer questions and offer support on Lighthouse and especially Fleet. This includes getting your organisation website up and running as part of the Fleet.

The exhibition will be open (so we’ll be on our stand) at the following times:

Friday 13 March 16.30 - 18.15

Saturday 14 March 09.00 – 18.00

Sunday 15 March 09.00 – 13.00

If you are wondering what Fleet is, or who we are, an explainer. Nationally the Lib Dems offer a suite of online campaigning tools detailed at https://tech.libdems.org.uk/ They range from Lighthouse (where you can manage your local party membership and local party), to Targeted Email (letting you email all email contacts, like members, supporters and subscribers), Connect itself (recording voter data), and Fleet – the Party designed and approved website system.

We at Prater Raines develop and support the website platform Fleet. We’ve been supporting the Lib Dems online for over 25 years (we know, we don’t look old enough).

If you are not already using Fleet, we’d love to explain the system, how it works, and how it could improve your digital campaigning. It is the only website system endorsed by the Lib Dems. It is integrated into their other tools like Lighthouse (also developed by Prater Raines) and Connect, and supported through the Party’s central support channels.

If you are going to be at Federal Conference in March, we could chat there. We will be at York conference on stand 2 (as you walk in through bag check, we’re the first stall to the right): just drop by our stall, and we’ll show you around the Fleet.

Alternatively fill out this register of interest form https://tech.libdems.org.uk/signup and we can make sure you are sent more details to consider with the rest of your local party.

There are currently over 350 Fleet sites, including Federal, MPs and AO's. Over 80% of local parties use Fleet too. We’d love to help your local party get onboard too.

01/03/2026

10am Saturday morning, and the following message arrives from our excellent data centre hosts CustodianDC:

"ME14 has seen a complete loss of 11kV supplies across all feeds due to two separate off-site high-voltage cable faults in the local area of Maidstone.

"CDC's UPS systems carried the load while all on-site generation started; and then transferred on to load as expected without any interruption to critical infrastructure."

That's not a good morning for their sysadmin team. We suspect a lot of tea hit a monitor somewhere in Maidstone as that happened. There was a moment of tension on the Sandgate area, despite the reassurances!

However despite the failure of TWO power lines into the building, they had UPS systems that took over immediately and kept their Maidstone centre running: we didn't even notice a power flick, and services were 100% available.

Prater Raines host servers at both their Maidstone and Dartford data centres. We have failover between both of them so for most services were pretty much covered (as long as the power also stayed on at Dartford, which it did).

However, we were watching, as were they, until they could issue the "all-clear" for Maidstone an hour later:

"UKPN engineers have completed works to repair the supplies and we have seen the restoration of our 11kV feeders now. The site has cleanly transferred back from local generation to grid without interruption to critical load."

Nothing to see here. Our web services didn't even glitch, because of the redundancy Custodian build into their systems, on top of the redundancy we build into ours. And that's why we like hosting with them.

05/02/2026

Prater Raines are delighted to have successfully nominated Living Words for a £9,350 Nominet Givehub award.

We were delighted to hear that Nominet GiveHub have granted £9,350 to Living Words, a local charity nominated by Prater Raines.

31/01/2026

Great night at the slightly belated Prater Raines Christmas Party (ahem) last night.

First up a guided pottery session led by our very own Sandgate ceramic at the ClayFolk.uk studio in Tontine Street. No notable pottery talent was discerned beyond Rosa's, but we all made something that may or may not end up as useable!

Then a couple of Super 8's at The Old Buoy, cocktails at Folklore, and delicious food at Marleys at the foot of the Old High Street.

All the food was good, but if you haven't tried it, run, do not walk, to try the Buffalo Chicken Wings, and the Mash potato with bone marrow. First time I've ever seen a doggy bag leave a restaurant with mash in it, but for good reason. Off. The. Chart.

31/01/2026

Delighted to help Tessa and team bring her new website, with bespoke surgery map tool, live this week. Great group to work with.

My new website is live! Please do visit www.tessamunt.co.uk to find out my latest news. Thank you.