Wandsworth Council 's Website named as one the top 5% local authority sites

from 467 council-run sites

Wandsworth Council's website has been named as one of the country's best in an independent nationwide study of e-government, identifying it as being in the top five per cent of local authority websites in the UK.

The assessment was carried out by the Society for Information Technology Managers (Socitm) which looked at 467 council-run sites across the country.

The society said that Wandsworth's was one of only 23 "Transactional' sites in the UK. This description is only given to websites that are "accessible, complete, thoughtful and coherent".

In the last six months - 2.3 million pages have been viewed on the council's website in a total of just over half a million visits. On an average working day around 2,500 individual visitors log onto the site with a total of 315,000 individuals visiting the site in the last six months.

The most popular sections are the on-line planning register, the travel planner, the parking service and the facilities for making on-line payments for council tax and other bills.

A recent customer satisfaction survey of people using the council's site showed that around 78 per cent were either very or fairly satisfied with the clarity of the information on the site and nearly 86 per cent are either very likely or fairly likely to make the site their first port of call when attempting to find information on council services. More than 1,000 users took part in the survey.

Cabinet member for corporate resources Cllr Maurice Heaster said: "Growing numbers of people are looking to use the internet to access information about their town hall and the services it provides. They expect to be able to conduct a wide range of transactions easily and quickly from the comfort of their homes or offices.

"This is something we welcome and the reason why we have invested so much in ensuring that our website remains at the cutting edge in providing the services that people nowadays expect and demand.

"If e-government is to thrive in this country then many councils need to do a lot more to achieve the high standards demanded by their customers."

April 30, 2004