PARISH Reviews 115

SCAMMERS. This website copies the look and style of offical .gov websites, and masquerades as an official local council, but it is not. It is private entity and they try and get a monthly fee out of you for what you think is a listing in your local council website.

Scam website. Sent me a renewal notification pretending to operate as a UK Gov website. The website has the same look and feel as UK Gov. This is definitely a scam as I never subscribed in the first place and they sent me a renewal notification.

Scam business emailing everyone with heavy sale technique to renew a directory listing we never consented to. Lots of incorrect info in the listings. Website misdirects by mentioning Govt. "community inititiative" as clickbait but then it is not run by the Govt. Scam.

Scam. Impersonating Gov UK

The PARISH.UK Network passes itself off as 'official'. It apes the look and feel of gov.uk websites and uses publically avaialbale data sources selectively to create a synthesised directory of UK parishes and their communities. It declares that it is not a government site in the small print, but the look and feel of its operations suggest otherwise.

Its business model is based around speculative emails, which reference business listings that are due for renewal. Parish.uk says that its actions are not FRAUD. It also claims that charging £19 to renew a business listing, which was created by scraping google and wikipedia is legitimate. I leave it to others who have received these emails to judge that for themselves.

They are still sending them out
Wrong postcode on my listing 😂
Do not part with £19 quite persistent sending daily reminders

Absolute scammers. Pretending that you have a listing that needs renewing, then suggesting is a cost of £19 year.
They even make their website look like a government website

As prophesied previously, still getting these spammy emails a year later. Obviously doesn't quite expire as predicted!

"Your Alcester Parish Business Directory listing for XYZ expires in 6 days. (well it didn't last year)

To renew the listing and confirm the company's contact details are up-to-date, please use the button below. Alternatively you can cancel the listing. Once the listing is cancelled you will not receive any further renewal reminder emails"

So you have to renew something you never signed up for, or cancel to stop receiving spam 😁

Luckily captured by spam filter, as I suspect most peoples are, which makes this an even more pointless business model.

Don't be one of the gullible, just ignore and delete.

Or leave a new review every year they tell you your listing expires in 6 days...

Scam! I was all set up to pay, followed what looks like a genuine Gov.uk link and website. Alarm bells rang with the payment details so did some research. No connection to local councils and no such business directory exists. I never signed up originally which was another alarm bell when renewing was mentioned. Reported to Gov.uk as they are impersonating the official website.

Happy to find out from the other reviews that this is a scam! Well done everyone - hopefully less and less people fall for the business listing emails

Almost paid for a renew of something I never signed to!
I looked at the invoice and thought, funny I don't remember having signed to this and became suspicious. I decided to look at reviews and could see that it is a scam.

Scam emails, run my own vps and anyone else running their own server add *@parish.uk to your blacklist

Like others, we've been spammed with "Renew your listing" emails, though we've never subscribed. The information is pulled directly from Wikipedia and the Vale of White Horse, and the website is designed to impersonate a .gov.uk website.
I've reported as spam and blocked them.

Scam, Spam, Pointless.
Designed to mimic genuine .gov or local council sites.
Scraping data from google and creating FALSE listings and then "claiming" that they're about to expire.
If you think you never signed up in the past.... you probably didn't. If you've now signed (fake renewal) then I'm sorry, but it's NOT legit.

Even being fairly tech savvy their email got me sucked in. I assumed it was a business listing I had done years ago or something automated by my local council. The website looks extremely similar to our council website - I assume this is their intention.

The email was:

—————-
Dear (Buisness name)

Your (area) Parish Business Directory listing for (business name) expires in 9 days.

https:// (area). parish. uk/business-directory/

To renew the listing and confirm the company's contact details are up-to-date, please use the button below. Alternatively you can cancel the listing. Once the listing is cancelled you will not receive any further renewal reminder emails.

___________

No where in the email doss it mention a charge.

You go to the form and start typing your info, which they have clearly pulled on Google so you think you must have written it. Only to scroll to the bottom to be asked how much you’d like to pay, and there isn’t a free option.

Only then did I realise the area.parish has nothing to do with my local council or the gov and is some random site someone set up called parish networks.

Never heard of it before, why on earth would anyone pay!

Scam.

Most certainly a sacm. I've reported to to Google spam.
DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY

Just tried me this morning taking all my details off of Google and copying to this site saying my renewal is due to make it look like .Gov site too Baffles me how its still allowed making a living off what we have already done or paying for elsewhere!

How this website is allowed I have no idea! Copies GOV.UK in every way other than a small piece of smallprint at the bottom, requesting businesses renew their listings despite having never signed up and offering to charge. Masuqerades itself as a community action initiative. However there are plenty of parish councils in the UK with news articles where they have presented themselves as 'parish sponsored' and otherwise yet are nothing to do with the council. Just scalps business listings from Google and Bing. Plenty of comments on here about the same thing and about the owners of PARISH.UK.

Repetitive emails claiming you need to renew a listing you never asked for and don't need. They claim not to be a scam, but to my way of thinking they are misrepresenting who they are by using a name that sounds as if its from your local parish, and also misrepresenting their relationship with your business by calling it a renewal, even though you have never registered with them.

Edit (06/05/25).... Also, if you ignore them and let your unrequested/unwanted listing expire they just start the whole thing again a few months later with another round emailing you every day for days on end!

We've received a spam email asking us to "Renew Business Listing" daily despite never having subscribed to this service. Clearly someone who isn't equipped to make an honest living is harvesting company details and using automated scripts to send out emails to businesses in bulk, hoping to snare a small percentage into paying £19. Their website has been deliberately styled to resemble a .gov site.

I strongly encourage anyone who has received these emails to Google...
ICO report spam emails
... and fill in the short form. You do not have to give your details if you don't wish to.