Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham and chairperson of London Connects, has welcomed news Lewisham Council’s website received the highest possible ranking in the annual Better Connected survey.
Steve said: 'Its great news that the Council’s website has been praised as one of the top 10 in London.
'One of my most important tasks is to make it easier for people to communicate with us and get information.
'It is essential that our website be easy to use, with up-to-date information and useful services'.
The Better Connected survey rates how well local authority sites perform.
The site was awarded 'transactional' status after scoring highly for enabling residents to access services such as paying council tax or claiming housing benefit online.
High ranking sites like Lewisham’s also give a quality user experience and pay attention to accessibility, completeness, thoughtfulness and coherence.
It is one of just 60 sites across the UK’s 468 local authorities to get this ranking – an improvement from its 'Content Plus' rank last year.
Every year the Better Connected report examines every UK local authority website and judges them against a standard for high quality websites of being 'useful, usable and used'.
The report provides an informed view of the experience members of the public are likely to have when engaging with local government through the council’s website.
Steve added: 'This news recognises the efforts of everyone involved in the website, but despite this success we won’t rest our laurels and will continue to strive to improve the service we offer online.'
Lewisham Council scored highly for:
- the currency and news value of the website
- having good information on our services
- excellent navigation
- good readability
- participation and people having the opportunity to influence council policies and decisions.
The report looked at how well each site deals with common queries and situations as well as technical issues. The main survey is based on a number of scenarios and themes carefully selected to give a rounded view of each website.
The report said of Lewisham’s website: 'Graphics were used to good effect to make this an engaging user experience. It has a good range of transactions and information is easy to find.'
