Are you Chicken?

We design and build digital tools that make life easier for councils and their communities.

Chicken is a UK-based digital agency helping local councils to build accessible websites with LocalGov Drupal. We’re a small team of highly active Drupal Core contributors with over 30 years of combined Drupal experience. As long-standing Drupal community members we also create open-source tools (like the PDF Importer), supporting councils with design, development and accessibility.

What we do best

Drupal development

We can work on any Drupal project. While helping to grow LocalGov Digital as a platform is one of our priorities and we love working with Local Government, we also deliver powerful Drupal solutions for public, third and commercial sector clients.

Accessibility audits

Audits written in plain English with recommendations to you and your development team on how to resolve issues.

Design & branding

Rejuvenating your brand doesn't have to be expensive. Sometimes a quick tidy up is all you need.

Frontend theming

We can take a design and put it onto your Drupal website

User experience

At the end of the day, it's ALL about the users of your website.

See our localgov services

We've worked on websites for organisations you've heard of.

... and there's a good chance we've worked on websites you've used.

Bristol Drupal user group

We host the Bristol Drupal user group monthly meetup. If you're in the area, come chat with us and other tech peeps.

Our story

Justine Pocock

Creative Director

User research, Design, Frontend development, CSS with the occasional site building.
Grows veg, usually has chickens.

Rupert Jabelman

Technical Director

Solves tricky problems, builds prototypes,
writes back end code, rides bikes.

1999
Rupert started studying for an MSc in Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of Bath. Eventually graduated after far too long with a BSc in Computer Science.
2003
Justine gets BA in New Media from the University of Bath (studied at Swindon for her sins!)
2005
Her first grown-up job was designing books, leaflets and banners for Natura 2000, The Wildlife Trusts, and BirdLife International.
Ru worked as an in-house dev for an insurance company. He built the first online insurance site that would let you buy an insurance policy online and make adjustments to it online.
2009
She found Drupal after needing to create a new website for BBOWT - an issue of Net Mag called "Choose the best free CMS" found in tesco, made her mind up.
Rupert decided that he'd had enough of insurance, and took a job at Sift in Bristol, building sites in Drupal.
2010
Justine joined Drupal UK IRC channel and became part of the community of devs, mostly talking rubbish and annoying the real developers.
Why build one site at a time when you can build thousands? Ru joined SubHub - a startup company in Cardiff building a site builder platform in Drupal 7. SubHub ran SWDUG, the South Wales Drupal User Group.
2011
Justine and Rupert met IRL at SWDUG.
We both attend our first Drupalcon in London/Croydon that same year.
2012
She joined Torchbox and became their frontend developer.
Ru Worked as a technical consultant for Acquia for 6 weeks. Decided the lifestyle wasn't for him so took a much more normal job at Aroq, a publishing house.
2013
He became Senior developer at Torchbox. Worked with Justine and Glenn for the first time, despite having known them both for actual years by this point. Before I joined, I decided that one way or the other, this would be my last job where I'm just an employee.
2016
Justine organised a bunch of Frontend United conferences in London, Copenhagen and Bristol.
Ru left Torchbox for a life of startups and consultancy. Been doing it ever since.
2017
At Drupalcon Dublin, Justine spoke about mental resilience in the first Being Human track
She joined Code Enigma as Head of Design - oversaw the company rebranding, helped hire a marketing whizz and learned a lot about ISO processes.
Justine and Simon (her boyfriend) got chickens and moved to Bristol, finally.
2018
Ru moved out of Bristol! (but not too far away that they can't meet for business brunches!)
2021
She went freelance, followed Ru to Ricardo. Designed a LGD website for LBHF.

In 2022

Chicken was born

Chicken was founded as a specialist LocalGov Drupal agency, focused entirely on public sector digital services.

We began working with Hammersmith & Fulham on a LocalGov Drupal website rebuild and migration. We started contributing enhancements back into the LocalGov Drupal community rather than building closed solutions, something we've always believed in.

2023
Delivered phased LocalGov Drupal implementation including Search improvements and microsite platform rollout
Released enhancements to the Events module, introducing “Finders” to improve content discoverability.
Turned HTML Publications work into a reusable LocalGov Drupal module to support structured, accessible publishing.
Joined the NatWest Accelerator, formalising our growth and business foundations.
Assisting Ricardo's Digital Services team by rebuilding NAEI, UKAIR and making whole bunch of smaller air quality websites and European Commission sites.
2024
Created the PDF Importer tool prototype to support structured publication migration and reduce reliance on inaccessible PDFs.
Delivered cross-council collaboration work with Essex to strengthen shared LocalGov Drupal improvements, including Subsite Extras and Finders.
Delivered a content audit, information architecture and site designs for an adoption website.
Approved supplier on G-Cloud 14.
2025
Created an interactive map module for Grainger Market in Newcastle.
Worked with Southwark to push the PDF importer to alpha stage.
Approved supplier on Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7
We strengthened operational delivery capacity through specialist support

How We Work Together

Chicken leads on design, accessibility, and user experience, with Justine and Rupert delivering senior-level strategy and build.

Our Capabilities Panel supplements this with:

Specialist development capacity (Joachim, John, Glenn, Mark)
Governance and project assurance (Ged)
Framework eligibility and delivery scale (Agile Collective)

This ensures that even on larger or more complex projects, councils benefit from resilient delivery, clear accountability, and senior oversight.

Join the flock

Our communities are important to us. Over the years, our professional community's given us work, friendship and great advice – come and join in.

Hang out with us in our Slack channel

We started chicken to be loosely joined freelancers. We welcome and support those who have chosen the free-range path.

Work with us on projects

As we take on more work we want trusted freelancers to help deliver more great work. On large projects we'll invite you to tender with us.

Email us to join