Groups
Types of groups, creating and editing groups.
As well as organisation pages for departments and agencies, GOV.UK also has pages for:
- sub-organisations
- groups
To create these you first need to contact the Government Digital Service (GDS).
Contact GDS to request a new sub-organisation.
Sub-organisations have a sufficient public profile and publish enough content to be listed separately below their parent organisation.
For example, sub-organisations within the Home Office include UK Visas and Immigration and Border Force.
A sub-organisation has an organisation page with its own corporate content and featured stories. It appears at the bottom of the parent organisation page.
The groups format is used for policy advisory groups and other types of groups or teams in government.
Contact GDS to request a group before creating it in Whitehall publisher.
If you have clearance to create a new group first read the guidance on groups.
Creating a group
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Select the ‘More’ tab and click ‘Groups’.
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Click ‘Create new group’.
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Enter the name, email address, summary and description of the group.
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Click ‘Save’.
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Open your group page and add any attachments.
Any changes to a group page will go live as soon as you save them.
Closing a group
When a group closes, update the group page to reflect that. Do not delete it - see the GOV.UK withdrawing and removing content policy. It is not possible to ‘withdraw’ group pages in the same way as other pages on GOV.UK.
Add a call to action box to the top of the page explaining that the group has closed. Consider including links to related information if there’s a user need for it. For example, a user may need to know more about why the group closed, the outcome of the group’s work or what is being done in this policy area after this group closes.
Keep the rest of the content as a record of what the group did.
Good examples of closed groups include the:
If the name of a group changes
Close the group and set up a new one with the new name.
Contact GDS to request a group before creating the new group.
A good example of a group that has changed its name is the Group Litigation Order (GLO) Compensation Scheme Advisory Board.