Little Fruitcakes: Multi-Academy Trust Website Design
A trust site and school sites that look related without looking identical
Publish once centrally and push it to every school that needs it
Statutory requirements tracked for the trust and for each academy
One supplier, one invoice and one number to ring
Why Choose Little Fruitcakes for Trust Websites
Every school keeps its own identity inside a shared framework.
A trust policy or vacancy goes up once and appears on every school site that needs it.
Each school posts its own news and letters without waiting for the centre.
The ninth school joins the system; nobody starts again.
SSL, daily backups and platform updates across the whole estate.
The same people look after every site, and you can ring them.
What We Offer
A central trust site and a site for every school, built as one system with shared statutory content.
Trust wide policies, vacancies and announcements pushed to every school from one place.
Roles set so the centre and each school edit what they should, with managed updates when you need them.
What the trust gets
A central trust website and a site for every school
A shared design system with per-school identity
One place to manage every site in the estate
Central publishing pushed out to chosen schools
Statutory requirements tracked per school and for the trust
Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA principles as far as the platform allows
Role based permissions for central and school staff
Onboarding for schools joining the trust
Secure UK hosting, SSL and daily backups across the estate
One supplier, one invoice, one number to ring
Every page a trust needs
Trust information and vision
Our schools
Governance, trustees and members
Scheme of delegation and register of interests
Annual reports, accounts and funding agreements
Trust wide policies
Central vacancies and recruitment
Admissions across the trust
News, events and central communications
I honestly cannot thank you and your team enough for the marvellous customer care and attention to detail
Fruitcake Media built a great website for me. Kept me involved throughout the process and were extremely quick to respond to any questions I had. Really felt they listened to my "concept" and designed around my thoughts and ideas
We were very impressed with the professionalism, time taken, value for money and overall we are delighted with the final design and ongoing help.
I would recommend Fruitcake Media to anyone looking for a stress free experience and a stunning website! Thank you for getting The Mother Hub off to a flying start!
Meet the team behind Little Fruitcakes
Little Fruitcakes is Fruitcake Media, a small web design team at Glasshouse, Alderley Park in Cheshire, looking after 400+ websites. We work with trusts anywhere in the UK, and the people who build the estate are the people who answer when you ring about it.
No ticket queues, no account managers, no outsourcing.
Multi-academy trust website design, built around the estate
Little Fruitcakes is the education side of Fruitcake Media, a web design team based at Glasshouse, Alderley Park in Cheshire, looking after 400+ websites. We work with trusts across the UK.
A trust is not a school with more pages. The people we speak to are managing a digital estate: several school sites, a central trust site, different suppliers inherited from different eras, contracts ending on different dates, and a statutory publishing burden that exists twice over, once for each academy and once for the trust itself. Most of the pain is not design. It is that nobody can see the whole estate at once.
A shared system, not eight unrelated websites
Schools joining a trust worry about losing their identity, and they are right to. So the estate runs on a shared design system, navigation pattern and component set, while each school keeps its own name, crest, colours and photography. Sites are recognisably related, consistently accessible and far cheaper to maintain, and adding the next school does not mean starting from scratch.
Publish once, appear where it should
Trust wide policies, central vacancies, term dates and statements are published once and pushed to the schools that need them. What a school owns stays with the school, and the permissions make the boundary explicit. It replaces the part of the job that is currently eight emails and a follow up.
Both layers of statutory publishing, tracked
Academies have their own list of what must appear online (set out in our guide to what schools must publish online). The trust has its own obligations: governance structure, the scheme of delegation, trustee and member information, register of interests, annual reports and accounts, and funding agreements. We map both layers against the estate before we build, hand you the mapping, and keep it current as guidance changes. If a school is missing an item, you hear it from us rather than from an inspector.
Accessibility across the whole estate
The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 apply to every school in the trust, and each site needs its own accessibility statement (see school website accessibility). Handling that once, in a shared system, is considerably easier than handling it eight times in eight different platforms. We build to WCAG 2.2 AA principles as far as the platform allows, and we will not claim certified compliance, because no honest supplier can.
One team to ring
The estate is looked after by the people who built it. One supplier, one invoice, one number, and someone who knows which school you mean when you ring about it.
Fruitcake Media holds 23 five-star Google reviews. We would rather tell you to move one school first and do it properly than promise an estate migration nobody enjoys.
If you are a single school rather than a trust, our page on school website design is the better starting point, and early years settings are covered by our nursery website design service.
Support across the estate, not just the sites
A trust usually has the same problems repeated across several schools, which is where doing things centrally actually pays.
Digital signage can run across every site from one login, with trust wide messages pushed out and each school keeping its own local content. Where a school needs something bespoke, such as a centralised application or an integration, app development sits with the same team.
One supplier across the estate means one conversation when something needs changing.
Questions trusts ask us
Can each school keep its own identity?
Yes, and it matters. Schools joining a trust are often anxious about losing what makes them theirs. The estate shares a design system, navigation pattern and component set so the sites are recognisably related and cheap to maintain, while each school keeps its own name, crest, colour and photography. The family resemblance is deliberate rather than accidental uniformity.
How does central publishing work?
You publish an item once at trust level and choose which schools it appears on. A trust wide policy, a central vacancy, an inset date or a statement goes out across the estate without anyone emailing eight office managers. Anything a school owns locally stays local, and we set the permissions so the boundary is clear.
What happens when a school joins the trust?
We run the onboarding. The new school gets a site built on the shared system, its statutory pages mapped and in place, its existing content migrated and redirects set up from the old addresses so search history is not lost. It is a process we have planned for rather than a project landing on your central team.
Do you track statutory requirements for every school?
Yes, and this is usually the thing that sells it. Academies have their own publishing list and the trust has separate obligations around governance, the scheme of delegation, trustee information and annual accounts. We map both layers, keep the mapping and can tell you which school is missing which item rather than you finding out during an inspection.
Can we move the whole estate across at once?
Usually we would not, and we will say so. Moving one school first, learning from it and then rolling out is lower risk and produces a better system. We will plan around existing contract end dates, which are rarely aligned across an estate.
Do you work with trusts outside the North West?
Yes. We are based at Alderley Park in Cheshire and work with trusts across the UK. The work is done remotely, so location makes no difference.
School & Trust Website Advice & Guides
The full list of what a maintained school or academy in England must publish on its website, taken from the DfE guidance updated in October 2024, with every deadline in one place, the academy trust extras and the housekeeping mistakes that get noticed.
A practical checklist of what a school or academy website should include beyond the statutory list: the first screen, admissions, term dates, letters, uniform and dinners, SEND and safeguarding, curriculum for parents, governors and vacancies, with a copyable list at the end.
Schools are partially exempt from the public sector accessibility regulations, but the content families need must meet WCAG 2.2 AA and an accessibility statement is still required. What that means in practice, the PDF problem, and a one-hour audit you can run yourself.
Looking after more than one school?
Book a call with the Little Fruitcakes team at Fruitcake Media. Tell us how many schools you have, what is on the estate now and what is causing the most work. We’ll be straight about what we would change, what we would leave alone and what it would take.
About Us
Fruitcake Media is a family-run web design and digital marketing agency. Our monthly subscription website model enables small businesses across the UK to get online from just £39 a month.
Contact Us
Glasshouse, Alderley Park, Congleton Road, Nether Alderley, Macclesfield, Cheshire, SK10 4TG
enquiries@fruitcakemedia.co.uk
01625724284