Test results for Copeland Borough Council
According to our records, this website hasn't had a major update since it was first registered with us - webteam members can update this information themselves.
Grey rows indicate this council is not responsible for this task, but has been tested according to how well it signposts to the correct council.
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| Totals | Navigation | A-Z | Site search | Readability | Score | Tests | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total scores | 127 | 2 | 173 | 126 | 42 | 470 | ||
| Number of tests | 34 | 2 | 33 | 33 | 6 | 108 | ||
| Usability Index (total score ÷ number of tests) | 4 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 4 |
About the scores
Each task can be tested according to five different criteria - navigation from the home page, navigation using the A-Z directory (where present), searching on Google, searching using the site's internal search, and the readability of the page. Scores are assigned according to 10 = Very easy, 8 = Easy, 4 = Difficult, and 1 = Gave up. As more users complete any given test, the score for each aspect of each task becomes a mean average of all the individual testers scores, and thus the more tests are completed the more reliable an indication of the usability of the website can be seen. The total scores in the table are thus the sum of the averaged scores for the whole suite of tasks which have been tested.
The Usability Index is the sum of the scores of all the tests which have been carried out, divided by the number of tests which have been taken for this council, resulting in an index score between 1 and 10, with 6 being the score which a nominallly usable website with room for improvement might be expected to achieve. If any criteria have had fewer than 15 tests, or the site as a whole has had fewer than 50 individually tested items, the final Index scores are shown in a grey background to indicate insufficient testing for the result to be a reliable indicator.
The Importance column shows the mean average of how important all the testers considered the ability to complete this task to be, ranging from 0 = Unimportant to 5 = Very important.
Specific comments made about this council
Antisocial behaviour - complain about it - 2014-02-12
'High hedges' was the top internal search result!
Council housing - apply for it - 2014-02-12
I assume the fact of the Housing main page referring only to housing association homes means Copeland does not have its own housing stock? By the way, I found the large picture of a homeless person being used as eye-candy on the page to be quite offensive.
Council meeting - read the last full council minutes - 2014-02-13
This is unbelievable and outrageous how difficult this task was to complete!
Council tax - pay it - 2014-02-12
Finding the main council tax page was easy enough, but then going in to find the specific page for paying council tax was quite hard. As with other pages, the eye-candy image dominating the page was distracting rather than helpful.
Council tax / housing benefit - apply - 2014-02-13
Came to a page about who can claim housing and council tax benefit, but it didn't take me any further to anywhere where I could actually make the claim. Google search eventually led me to a form which was a .pdf file on a page with no other context, and as a .pdf requiring me to print it out and complete with a pen rather than being able to complete electronically.
Councillors - find who mine are - 2014-02-12
It was good to be able to filter / search by ward.
Economic condition and strategy for the area - find it - 2014-02-13
Internal search returned a .pdf of a document titled Cumbria Economic Strategy 2009-2019, but with no contextual information on the page. Google search returned, as with many other tasks, many more potentially useful results.
Employment help for people with disabilities - find information on - 2014-02-13
To be fair, few councils seem to perform well at this task.
Food hygiene problem - report one - 2014-02-12
The overall design of the page made it harder to read than it could have been. As somebody wanting to report getting food poisoning I want to be taken straight to the relevant information rather than have the page dominated by a large promo picture of somebody holding a slice of pizza! Internal search gave two pages about rats a mice with the remaining results appearing to be meeting minutes.
Jobs - find a council job - 2014-02-12
I did like the fact that there's a page which basically is open and honest about them being more likely to be cutting jobs than creating them.
Local services and information on a map - look at - 2014-02-12
There's a postcode / streetname look-up facility, but I couldn't find a way to do that on a map.
Missed bin collection - complain about one - 2014-02-12
Does this council seriously not have a page on which to report a missed bin collection???
Missed bin collection - complain about one - 2014-08-12
You don't seem able to report a missed bin online - it just gave me a phone number to call.
Open Data - find some - 2014-02-13
The only open data I could find was expenditure over £500 and the senior officers' salaries.
Petitions - create one - 2014-02-12
I was only able to find the external petitions site via the Google search
Planning or building control violation - report one - 2014-02-13
Would have marked the readability as Very easy if it wasn't for the annoying large graphic taking up half the page.
Planning permission - apply for it - 2014-02-12
Getting to the page was easy enough, however the link to the online planning portal was hidden at the bottom of the page containing the (long) list of downloadable forms to complete, and the downloadable forms were .pdf files meaning they would need to be to be printed out and filled in by hand and posted rather than being word documents which could be completed electronically and submitted by email.
Population and census information - find it - 2014-02-12
Nothing at all turned up on a search for 'census', and only basic information on a search for 'population'.
Scrutiny committee reports and minutes - find them - 2014-02-12
Finding a list of committees was easy. Finding any documents about what they've actually been doing and deciding, on the other hand...
Google search found one, possibly the most recent, but there was no way beyond that to find specific reports.
Small business support - find information - 2014-02-12
Notwithstanding having had such a poor experience in testing other aspects of this site, I was actually quite impressed with how easy it was to navigate to complete this task and the range of information offered. As with some other tasks, the external Google search revealed more information than the internal search.
Social media accounts - find them - 2014-02-12
The design of the home page hiding the fact of there being content off-screen to scroll down to made this harder. Search just produced a FAQ page called 'How do you communicate with residents' which was just waffle text.
Supplying the council - find out how - 2014-02-12
Possibly one of the easiest navigation routes I've seen, with the link to the relevant page being one of (the few) links under Business on the global navigation. The massive picture for four sentences of text does detract from the experience a bit, though. The Google search result would have been better had it had the council listed on the results page to signpost to The Chest in order to provide greater confidence that The Chest is the legitimate route.
Sustainability and climate change - find information on - 2014-02-12
Considerably more information can be found as a result of a Google search than from the internal search.
Taxi driver - complain about one - 2014-02-12
Horriblest home page I've ever seen! Text scrolling above a fixed background image is very difficult and distracting.
Telephone number - find the main one - 2014-02-12
Now although it's actually probably the easiest council website I've ever seen for finding the main phone number due to putting it in big numbers in the masthead area of every page, I'm actually marking it as 'gave up' on account of it being an 0845 number, which me, as a solely mobile phone user, would have to pay 35p per minute to use. This is not an acceptable practice for a council.
Trading Standards - complain about a dodgy item from a shop - 2014-02-12
Only found the signpost to Cumbria County Council via external Google search
Tree preservation order - apply for one - 2014-02-13
The page about tree preservation orders had information about what you can do to a tree with a TPO, but no information about how to apply for one for a tree. And it had yet another useless large image
Watch a webcast of a recent council or committee meeting - 2014-02-13
Presumably this council doesn't have webcasts of meetings.