Case Studies
Three bodies of work. All three live. All three built from nothing.
No anonymised client results, no projected figures. Everything here is owned, operated, and publicly verifiable.
SIBA Digital
A public interest investigation platform covering governance failures in Business Improvement Districts and local public bodies across the UK. Active investigations in Southport, Rochdale, Leicester, and Ripon. Built on Next.js with structured data throughout. Every claim sourced to a primary public record.
12
Reports published
26
FOI requests filed
55%+
Senior audience
The approach
Companies House filings. Land Registry title registers. Published supplier spend data. Freedom of Information disclosures. Planning applications. Filed accounts. All public. All cross-referenced. The structured data layer means every entity, every relationship, every source is machine-readable as well as human-readable. Nothing is alleged that is not sourced.
The scope
Founding investigation in Southport: one Sefton Council officer accumulating unreviewed authority across every relevant function in the town's visitor economy. Adjacent threads: a council-owned hospitality company with £1.945 million in accumulated losses, a land deal executed without published valuations, a media contractor with undisclosed commercial relationships to the bodies it covers, and a property company owning the body that accredits the BID it advises. Active investigations now running in Rochdale (undeclared BID directorship by an Audit Committee chair), Leicester (director network and operating agreement), and Ripon (benchmark for compliant governance).
The results
A single published analysis reached professionals from the House of Commons, MHCLG, Savills, and AtkinsRéalis, and drew direct interest from national journalists within hours of publication. Over 55% of the audience held senior, director, or executive positions. Formal regulatory complaints filed. Solicitors acting for named parties made contact. The platform was built to be credible, indexed, and navigable under scrutiny. It is.
Recent milestones
Apr 2026
River Law Limited sent letter before action. SIBA filed SRA report 30 April 2026.
May 2026
Formal complaint filed with Sefton Council Chief Executive. Acknowledged within 30 minutes. Separate complaint filed with the Monitoring Officer.
May 2026
Report 12 published: King of Southport. Full structural map across VisitSouthport, BID, MLEC, the Airshow, and Salt and Tar. National journalists engaged within hours.
Jun 2026
Stage 2 formal complaint filed directly with Phil Porter. 11 internal review decisions received. Active investigations expanded: Rochdale, Leicester, and Ripon.
Jun 2026
BID Governance in the UK: The Complete Independent Guide published at siba.digital/resources/bid-governance. Reached House of Commons and MHCLG professionals.
The commercial application: the same methodology applied to an organisation's own public digital footprint. What is visible, to whom, and what it implies. That is the Digital Footprint Intelligence service.
Sefton Coast Network
Four editorial sites built and operated simultaneously on the same Next.js architecture. All live, all ranking, all owned.
4
Sites operated
999+
Venues indexed
257
Wildlife species
Visitor guide and business directory. 999+ venues. The Open 2026 hub. Next.js, Prisma, PostgreSQL.
Local guide to Formby. Red squirrels, National Trust beach, pinewoods, village dining.
Championship links golf in 18 languages. Royal Birkdale, Hillside, Formby. Internationalised with next-intl.
257-species database. Birds, mammals, insects, plants. Special Area of Conservation coverage.
What this demonstrates
Four distinct editorial sites, cross-linked contextually, each with its own audience, SEO strategy, and technical requirements. Built on the same foundation and maintained by one person alongside client work. This is what properly engineered content infrastructure looks like when it is built to compound rather than to be rebuilt every two years.
The network is the proof of concept for everything Churchtown Media builds for clients.
The Sandgrounder
Independent opinion, satire, and reporting from Southport. The public-facing companion to SIBA Digital, built for a general audience rather than a professional one.
7
Pieces published
3
Content categories
1
Day to launch
The rationale
SIBA Digital publishes structured reports for a professional and regulatory audience. The Sandgrounder publishes the same underlying material in a form that Southport residents can read, share, and act on. Satire, opinion, and factual reporting. All sourced. All legally reviewed. The FOI tracker, the conflicts of interest, the governance failures — told without the register of a compliance document.
The build
Full Next.js App Router architecture. Dynamic sitemap. robots.txt. Per-article Open Graph and Twitter card metadata. JSON-LD Article schema on every piece. Newsletter integration via Resend. Share buttons across all platforms including Web Share API. Contact form with Resend delivery. Privacy and legal pages. Ahrefs and Bing Webmaster verification. Built and fully live in a single session.
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