'Local community' websites can mean different things to different people. For some it might mean a basic static website not updated much, for others it might mean a website that is updated regularly with news and events thus growing into a large dynamic site, for others it might mean a website where the community itself can contribute to the content via social networking features, and to others it might mean a forum.
The mass market sitebuilders like mrsite and 1&1 website builder might suffice if it is a small website, and if you are looking at these sitebuilders you should also consider sitebuilders such as
Microsoft Office Live basics, and sitebuilders such as instant site from
www.123-reg.co.uk (which is a whitelabel version of the US sitebuilder system from
Parallels , so you will find this system provided by other hosts too).
With 1&1 and Microsoft Office Live, go for a .co.uk or .org.uk domain name (MS Office Live currently only supports .co.uk out of the .uk domains) since the hosting is in Germany and US respectively and this can confuse the search engines.
With Office Live and MrSite, purchase your domain separately at a domain registrar, you should be able to point it at your new site, and point it away easily if you outgrow the service. This isn't such an issue with 1&1 and 123-reg since they are domain registrars too.
With most cheap mass market sitebuilders they do suffer from the problem of not being designed for too big a website, so if it is a more serious website you need then you should consider more advanced systems like Wordpress or Joomla, but with advanced systems comes more of a learning curve and some techie knowledge.