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Booking, payments & ticketing for town & parish councils.

Run every council asset from one council booking system — halls, sports facilities, meeting rooms and market stalls. Take bookings and card payments online, raise invoices in bulk, sell event tickets, and keep a full audit trail of who did what.

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One platform, three kinds of asset.

Most councils manage a mix of indoor rooms, sports facilities and outdoor spaces. LemonBooking handles all three from one system, one customer list, one set of accounts.

Room hire

From village halls and parish rooms to scout huts and pavilions — let residents check availability and book online, with deposit and approval rules per space.

  • Community centres & village halls
  • Committee & meeting rooms
  • Scout huts & pavilions
  • Take refundable deposits
Sports facilities

Tennis courts, football pitches, MUGAs and bowling greens — with peak / off-peak rates, season memberships and pay-and-play card payments on the spot.

  • Tennis & netball courts, MUGAs
  • Football, cricket & rugby pitches
  • Bowling greens & pavilions
  • Pay-and-play with one-time pin codes
Parks & outdoor spaces

Sell pitches for the weekly market, hire out the bandstand for a charity fete, or book the park for an event — with capacity limits and conflict checks built in.

  • Market stalls & fete pitches
  • Bandstands & park gazebos
  • Parks & community gardens
  • Capacity limits & conflict checks

Card payments

LemonBooking can seamlessly integrate with a number of council-focused payment providers including Access PaySuite, Civica, GOV.UK Pay, Worldpay and Pay360.

  • Auto-send a payment link with each booking approval.
  • Take card payments with the provider you already use.
  • Take and return refundable deposits automatically.
Civica
Pay360
GOV.UK Pay
Worldpay
Access PaySuite

Invoice all your regulars in one run.

Bowls club every Tuesday, the playgroup every weekday morning, the market traders every Saturday — generate a month's invoices for all your regular hirers in a single run, then send or download them in one go.

  • Generate invoices for regular customers in bulk.
  • Download as PDFs or export to CSV for your records.
  • Automated reminders chase the ones that fall overdue.

Clerk, councillors and a clear paper trail.

Give the clerk, councillors and the caretaker exactly the access each needs — admin, editor or view-only — then switch on the audit log so every approval, cancellation, invoice and refund is recorded against a named user. The accountability a public body's booking software is expected to show.

  • Roles for the clerk, councillors and caretaker.
  • Audit log of every approval, invoice and refund.
  • An evidence trail for full-council meetings and the annual audit.

Accessible to every resident who books.

As a public body, your council has a legal duty to make its online services usable by everyone. The website, calendar, booking form and event pages LemonBooking produces all meet WCAG 2.1 AA, so you satisfy your Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 obligations out of the box — no extra plug-ins, audits or accessibility consultants.

  • Keyboard-navigable calendar and booking form
  • Screen-reader friendly labels, headings and ARIA states
  • AA-grade colour contrast, scalable text and focus rings
  • In-line, descriptive error messages on every form
  • Accessibility statement template you can publish

Income & usage, in real time.

See at a glance how every council asset is performing — income and occupancy across halls, sports pitches and courts, committee rooms and market stalls — ready for the next finance committee or annual return.

  • Income and occupancy per facility and date range.
  • Check which assets are covering their costs.
  • CSV exports for the finance committee or annual return.

Trusted by councils up and down the country

Borough of Bexley
Brighton & Hove City Council
Buckinghamshire Council
Mid & East Antrim Borough Council
Wakefield Council

Customer review from Trustpilot

“The system has worked really well for our Parish Council for event tickets and venue booking. The system is straight forward to setup and use and any queries are quickly responded to.”

R
Rajar (Parish council)
Read more reviews on Trustpilot

Standards your IT department will approve of.

Councils handle residents' data and public money, so your booking system has to stand up to procurement questions and data-protection checks. LemonBooking keeps your data in a UK data centre, is GDPR compliant and Cyber Essentials certified, and is registered with the ICO.

Don't just take our word for it — read our reviews on Trustpilot.

Frequently asked questions

Anything we haven't covered, drop us a line.

Can one system handle halls, sports facilities, meeting rooms and market stalls?

Yes — manage all your council assets in one place: halls and community centres, indoor and outdoor sports facilities, meeting rooms and market stalls, each with its own calendar, pricing and booking form.

Can some facilities be booked instantly and others need approval?

Yes — set up multiple booking forms with different rules. Let residents book a tennis court instantly, while a hall hire for a party goes through to the clerk for approval first.

Can residents pay by card, and can we return deposits?

Yes — connect GOV.UK Pay, Access PaySuite, Civica, or Pay360 to take payment from a link on the invoice. Refundable deposits can be returned automatically once the booking is over.

Can we bulk-invoice regular hirers?

Yes — generate invoices for repeat and regular customers in one run and import them into your accounting package with a few clicks, instead of raising each one by hand.

Can we control who has access, with an audit trail?

Yes — assign different roles, and use the audit log so every approval, cancellation, invoice and refund is recorded. Straightforward controls for data-privacy compliance.

Can we have rooms or facilities that are only available for staff to book?

Yes — a space can be kept off the public booking calendar and reserved for internal use only. The council chamber or a staff-only room never appears to residents; the clerk and staff book it from the back office instead. You decide which spaces are public and which are internal.

Can the clerk and councillors manage bookings on the move?

Yes — LemonBooking runs in any web browser, so the clerk and councillors can approve bookings, raise invoices and check the calendar from a phone, tablet or laptop, in the office or out and about. There's no app to download and nothing for the council's IT to install, patch or roll out across devices — everyone simply signs in.

Free trial

Ready to bring your council's bookings online?

30 days free. No card required. We help you set up your facilities, booking rules and payment provider so you're not starting from a blank page. We have templates for importing calendar data too.

Start free trial No card required · 30 days free · No obligation

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