Election documents
Scope
Accessibility legislation on GOV website states that public sector websites must publish content in an accessible format, unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden on the organisation. If that is the case, an assessment of the extent to which compliance with the accessibility requirement imposes a disproportionate burden must be carried out.
This is a Disproportionate Burden Assessment for the following Elections documents, many of the elections documents are created by the government/The Electoral Commission and the format legally cannot be amended. Most documents are in PDF format.
Benefits of making accessible
The benefits of creating accessible versions of these PDFs would be a fully accessible version for all users to access and an easily searchable and indexable version
Burden of making accessible
These statutory documents have been produced by Huntingdonshire District Council, following a Modern GOV template.
The documents are added and updated depending on the political landscape and elections.
The reports are in required formats and have required original signatures so a scanned PDF is often the result of this. It would take a significant amount of time to convert this into accessible formats.
We cannot make these documents accessible as they include agreed results and outcomes as well as original signatures.
Other factors
We are legally required to make the documents available to the public, so the documents must be published on the Council's website.
Given the nature of their content there is the need to publish these documents in a timely fashion, so we took the decision to publish them as PDFs.
Should any document be requested in an accessible format, we will be happy to assist
Assessment
Due to the nature of the documents and the required formats and original signatures it is not possible to publish in a fully accessible format than text alone.
However, should there be a request for information contained within the document in an accessible format, we will be able to provide the information.
Date of assessment
16 July 2026
Planning Public Access documents
Scope
Accessibility legislation on GOV website states that public sector websites must publish content in an accessible format, unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden on the organisation. If that is the case, an assessment of the extent to which compliance with the accessibility requirement imposes a disproportionate burden must be carried out.
This is a Disproportionate Burden Assessment for the planning public access documents that have been signed in person or produced by third parties and accessible on our 3rd party hosted Planning Public Access site. This is because the software within the system coverts these files into scans, causing them to be images instead. We consider this to be a disproportionate burden because it is something we do not have control over. However, we will raise this issue with the supplier so that we comply with WCAG 2.2.
Benefits of making accessible
The benefits of creating accessible versions of these PDFs would be a fully accessible version for all users to access, and an easily searchable and indexable version
Burden of making accessible
These statutory documents have been produced by a 3rd party hosted Planning Public Access site. This is because the software within the system coverts these files into scans, causing them to be images instead.
These documents are added daily to comply with planning law.
The documents are extensive including large plans, reports, public comments and prepared officer report and can be extensive. it is something we do not have control over. However, we will raise this issue with the supplier so that we comply with WCAG 2.2.
We cannot estimate how long it would take each document to be made fully compliant with accessibility rules. These are current and historic documents going back to 2002 and need to be available for customers to view.
Other factors
We are legally required to make the documents available to the public, so the documents must be published on the Council's website.
Given the nature of their content there is the need to publish these documents in a timely fashion, so they are published in an image format by the process of upload.
Should any documents be requested in an accessible format, we will be happy to assist.
Assessment
Due to the nature of the documents, they contain large plans, reports, public comments and prepared officer reports and the current process is the most effective way of having them available as soon as they are received by the service.
Date of assessment
16 July 2026
Financial statements
Scope
Accessibility legislation on GOV website states that public sector websites must publish content in an accessible format, unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden on the organisation. If that is the case, an assessment of the extent to which compliance with the accessibility requirement imposes a disproportionate burden must be carried out.
This is a Disproportionate Burden Assessment for Financial statements. Some of our financial statements (such as expenditure over £250 and procurement card expenditure) are produced in Excel so pre-set heading styles can’t be tagged. We believe it’s a disproportionate burden to produce the statement of account in Word, as data values would be lost.
Benefits of making accessible
The benefits of creating accessible versions of these in word would mean they are a fully accessible version for all users to access, and an easily searchable and indexable version.
Burden of making accessible
These statutory documents have been produced by Huntingdonshire District Council in line with financial regulations.
These documents are added and updated constantly.
The reports are quite extensive and have lots of data analysis, figures and relevant information including charts, graphs and images. It would take a significant amount of time to convert this into accessible formats.
We estimate that it would take around 5 working days to make each document fully compliant with accessibility rules. This would place an undue burden of work on the Web Content Team and Service area who would be tasked to do all this work and would result in the delay of our publishing targets.
Other factors
We are legally required to make the documents available to the public, so the documents must be published on the Council's website.
Given the nature of their content there is the need to publish these documents in a timely fashion, so we took the decision to publish them in the CSV and PDF format.
Should any data from the report be requested in an accessible format, we will be happy to assist
Assessment
Due to the nature of the documents, they contain a high number of charts and tables which take more time to convert to an accessible format than text alone.
We estimate that it would take 5 working days to create a fully accessible version of each of the documents and this would place an undue burden on the Council, given the small number views received per year.
However, should there be a request for information contained within the document in an accessible format, we will be able to provide the data in text format.
Date of assessment
16 July 2026
Modern.gov documents
Scope
Accessibility legislation on GOV website states that public sector websites must publish content in an accessible format, unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden on the organisation. If that is the case, an assessment of the extent to which compliance with the accessibility requirement imposes a disproportionate burden must be carried out.
This is a Disproportionate Burden Assessment for Modern.gov documents. Some documents created after council/committee meetings (such as minutes and decisions) may have been approved in their existing format by councillors and therefore cannot easily be changed. Identifying and changing these to be accessible would require input and sign off from councillors from council services and from councillors who may no longer be serving. We believe it is a disproportionate burden to update the document formatting now.
Benefits of making accessible
The benefits of creating accessible versions of these documents would be:
a fully accessible version for all users to access
an easily searchable and indexable version
Burden of making accessible
These statutory documents have been produced by Huntingdonshire District Council, following a Modern GOV template.
These documents are added and updated after meetings and changes and are constantly being added after meetings.
The reports are extensive, and include charts, graphs, plans and images. It would take a significant amount of time to convert this into accessible formats.
We estimate that it would take around 5 working days to make each document fully compliant with accessibility rules. This would place an undue burden of work on the Elections Team who would be tasked to do all this work and would result in the delay of our publishing targets.
Other factors
We are legally required to make the documents available to the public, so the documents must be published on the Council's website.
Given the nature of their content there is the need to publish these documents in a timely fashion, so we took the decision to publish them as PDFs.
Should any data from the report be requested in an accessible format, we will be happy to assist
Assessment
Due to the nature of the documents, they contain signatures, plans and tables which take more time to convert to an accessible format than text alone.
We estimate that it would take 5 working days to create a fully accessible version of each of the documents and this would place an undue burden on the Council, given the small number views received per year.
However, should there be a request for information contained within the document in an accessible format, we will be able to provide the data in text format.
Date of assessment
16 July 2026