Bracknell

Bracknell Forest Borough Council’s website is one of the best in Britain according to a new survey.

The Better Connected 2008 report published by Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) ranks the Bracknell Council’s website - at www.bracknell-forest.gov.uk - as being one of the top 20 most developed council websites in Britain.

The report examines every UK council website and judges them against SOCITM standards for high-quality websites of being useful, usable and used.

The Bracknell Council’s website achieved the standard of providing ‘excellent’ content and received particular praise for its clarity and ease of navigation. The report highlighted it as an example of good practice for its use of clear English, marked by the award of an Internet Crystal Mark by the Plain English Campaign.

The report also ranked the Council website as having the highest level of take up by local residents in the country, with more than 43 per cent of residents using it to find information or use its online services.

The Better Connected 2008 report is the 10th annual survey of all local authority websites. In that time Bracknell Forest’s website has been ranked as one of the top English unitary council sites for the last five years.

It particularly praised the waste and recycling pages for showing clear, concise and relevant information for residents. It said the A-Z of Waste and Recycling was simply worded, written with the user in mind and empathetic to the user.

In a separate survey, the website was found to be one of the best in Britain for being accessible to all residents.

It came 18th out of 463 council websites for being accessible to everyone of all ages, backgrounds or level of ability or disability and error free with excellent performance. The survey was carried out by website monitoring experts SiteMorse.

Colin Stenning, Bracknell Web Services Manager, said: "'These are impressive accolades and ones we are very proud of.

"We are continually making improvements to our website and this is reflected in the ratings and in our recent resident satisfaction levels."

Cllr Iain McCracken, Executive Member for Bracknell Corporate Services, said: "I am extremely pleased with the progress we have made with our website. Our IT staff at the borough work hard to keep it up to date and accessible to all and it is particularly pleasing to see their efforts rated so highly by SOCITM.

Bracknell Forest Borough Council