Vale Council website surges up the charts!
Just nine months after the launch of the Vale of Glamorgan
Council's new website, it has been judged as the third best local
authority website in Wales.
According to a league table produced by Sitemorse, the Vale
Council's website ranking has also risen from 452nd in the UK this
time last year to 63rd – an incredible rise of 389 places in just
12 months!
Since the website's re-launch in December 2006, as well as
visiting the site to find out everything they need to know about
the council and the Vale, local people have been able to take
advantage of a host of easy-to-use online functions, including
applying for a job with the council, paying their Council Tax and
being able to find out the day of their kerbside recycling and
refuse collections.
The website is becoming increasingly interactive - it is now
possible to submit a planning application online, and you will soon
be able to track the progress of planning applications and search
back through a planning application database stretching back over
20 years!
Another imminent development involves trialling a
‘voice-on-the-web’ system called Readspeaker, which will make the
Vale Council’s website accessible for dyslexics, people with
learning disabilities, low literacy level, people with English as a
second language, and elderly with impaired vision – groups of
people who are estimated to represent more than 20 per cent of the
population in Europe.
Accessibility is one of the main criteria upon which the
Sitemorse report bases its rankings. The other factors, all
relating to how people experience the websites they visit, are -
how long it takes to download pages, the quality of the site’s
electronic indexing system, the number of errors and site warnings
reported, and the response time from the server.
The impressive ranking rise has been down to a huge amount of
effort and creativity from Vale Council staff, and the implemention
of a new web content management system. Along the way, various and
diverse groups ranging from school children, disabled users, Welsh
speakers and novice website users, have been consulted on the
site’s appearance, performance and navigation. The aim has been to
create a website that is an asset to everyone in the Vale, and
plans are afoot to help the site improve even more over the coming
years.
Cllr Neil Moore, Deputy Leader of the Vale Council, and Cabinet
Member for Finance, ICT and Property, said: "I am delighted that
our website is now ranked number three in Wales and 63rd in the UK.
Throughout the past year our staff have been working hard to keep
it up to date and introduce new content and functions to the
site.
“Ultimately, we want our website to be a ‘one stop shop’ for
local people, and we are continuing to make the site more and more
interactive. Our website means that our citizens and customers can
access Council information and services 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, and 365 days a year without having to leave their home."