THIS WEEK marks our first year in business. We launched the shell for the site in the second week of February, 2010. The initial months were comprised of Bay Life beta, publishing various local articles, business reviews and features.

By the time June came and the planning for the annual Pevfest, we were well enough established to support the Big Day.

It has been an interesting year. We have formed partnership links with The Coastal Defence Team, based in the Bay, and we are delighted to report that the Team have won their bid to continue their sterling work. The work represents a unique private public partnership. Whlist there are many questions about public private partnerships in the schools sector and in the health services, what the team have shown is that this way of working can be of benefit to local communities as a long term sustainable business model. The connection of the team to the local community in terms of sponsoring publications, events and special days (including the sponsorship of Bay Life) is also something worthy of public acknowledgement.

We are also forming a sound partnership with the local Pevensey and Westham Transport network. We applaud their work. They also represent a unique kind of public private partnership.

Local pubs and clubs are becoming a full-time feature of Bay Life. The event board plays host to regular and one-off gigs and a developing link with the Beach Tavern will enable us to promote what is becoming a thriving family-hub of entertainment, food and weekly drop-ins.

Last year we supported Pevfest with a starting grid style presentation that saw nearly 1,000 pages views in a single day. This year we have developed a dedicated site for the Day. The domain www.pevfest.co.uk is about to launch and will provide a new home for the festival and all that it has to offer.

The Guardian Open platform licence has granted us the opportunity to provide a mix of news based articles and reviews that bring positive attention to the Bay as both a business community and a special place to live.

Pevensey Bay Life is the first local site for any community in Sussex to utilise one of these new licences. Today, for example, we publish an archive review article from the resources of the Guardian’s 1.4 million articles. The story is about a documentary made in 2005. It celebrates Peter Sellers and his own attachment to Bay Life. By mixing national news and features and giving them a local flavour we have come up with our own bucket and spade style ice-cream good enough to click. Not hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top, quite literally, millions.

One MP, Tom Watson, cites this new way of working with journalism online as the possible future for the web with news.

We are a private business with a very public function. In that sense, like the Pevensey Bay Coastal Defence team and the Local Transport partnership, public service is at the heart of our endeavours.

We would like to thank the people who have supported us in our first full year of business, particularly Ian Thomas at the Coastal Defence Team. Joyce Richards at the local Pevensey and Westham transport partnership and Stephan Ritchie at the Beach Tavern.

Our aim was to develop a sustainable social and business platform for Pevensey Bay on the web. Within a year we have built that platform.