Worthing Borough Council

Reply: Wow, thanks! Seriously, all that matters is making this website a really good one for accessing council services and also provide useful information for those who live, work or visit Worthing. Of course there is still a massive amount of work to be done but our feedback and survey results show that compared to our old website is like night and day. We'll keep on working making things better and better.

But let's not forget, many of the improvements have come about directly because people have taken the time to comment in a constructively critical manner, and that has made it so much better for everybody. So my thanks go to those who take the time to comment!

Answer: This page is a bit confusingly named as that page is for who you should contact if your seeking specific advice on artefacts rather than the Museum and Art Gallery in general. Instead if you use our A to Z Index, click on M and then Museum and Art Gallery for example. Or click on Leisure on the homepage and then choose Museum and Art Gallery on the Leisure and Culture index page. (I hate wording these things as it sounds more convoluted than it is.) On the Museum and Art Gallery homepage is a link to their contact information including a location map.

You can also click on 'Where is the Council' on every page and that will list all of the council's locations including the Museum although you'd be forgiven that just meant the Town Hall. I will think of how I can word this better.

Also I have a number of locations to add to the Travelling To Us Gadget including the Tourist Information Centres and the Museum and Art Gallery.

Also for general transport information you can use our A to Z Index to look up phrases like Cycling, Buses, Railway Stations and Trains which has lots of useful travel information.

Therefore I shall:

• Improve the wording on the page you came unstuck at and link to the Museum's contact details proper
• Improve the choice of words used on 'Where is the Council' link
• Add Worthing Museum and Art Gallery to the Travelling To Us Gadget as a destination

Thanks for your feedback.

Reply: You're more or less spot on. The page did rather stupidly hide the word Home Composting in the short paragraph preceding the Recycling Links link so that you'd be forgiven for not spotting it.

I've corrected this as this is important, the Recycling page now has a short index of its own as it's a big page with lots of information, at the top of the page is a link to Home Composting and Food Waste Bins. This page gives you all the information about how to get started with both of these as West Sussex County Council provides bins/composters at a discounted rate. Also the A to Z Index has been thoroughly updated to include entries for Home Composting, Food Waste Bins, Recycling - Food Waste Bins and Home Composting etc. I do hope this is better. I have chosen to link to West Sussex County Council as that way the information will stay up to date (as it's part of their waste management rather than Worthing's.)

Reply: We do listen, and when we get something wrong on the website we sort it out. Quick Links as these are was a glaring error on our part in all honesty as we felt from user testing and internal auditing most people didn't use them. In fact a lot of people do. So we have returned them back to the website picking out the pages and services people come to this website for the most. The page comments cannot be responded to as they are anonymous (unless you write your contact details in.) The bottom line is that sometimes we can't do everything for everybody as we have to make things work for the majority, but secondary to that, we care about this website and if we can make it better, you can be sure we will.

Reply: I think unfortunately when you last looked the website was the old one and things have pretty dramatically changed in that time to when you have looked now. What is very clear is that most people succeed in finding what they are looking for and in fact we are now above the national average for shire district websites in the success people have finding what they are looking for. Things will only get better.

As such we don't purposely move things around to make it difficult, we only move things where it is very clear we have put something in the wrong place and people can't find it. This website is a radical departure from the old website nothing apart from the content (i.e. what the website says) remains of the old website. We made a clean break to set residents, businesses and visitors of Worthing (as users of this website) up for many years to come, this means that the order and structure of the website has settled down now meaning that the next time you visit, you can use the same methods to find new information and in almost all cases return to where you found the information last time.

Reply: I'm sorry you haven't found what you were looking for. Have you tried looking on our Local Events page rather than What's On At The Museum? You can find this by going into the A to Z or clicking on Leisure on the homepage and then Local Events. You can also look at Local Events from the homepage where the Feed Reader (which shows News, Jobs and Events) is located as standard. I've also put a link on the homepage to the Carnival information but sadly it appears you looked just before I managed to get the details on there.

As for the horrible brown colour. The colour is in fact a deep burgandy red on the header, this is the corporate colour and I can't change it. However on most screens I have artificially inflated its brightness as most people have uncalibrated screens (that means colour balance, brightness and contrast is not accurately set up.) As a consequence the vast majority of our visitors so that it looks the right colour for most people. Sadly, a few screens are very bad at representing colour and in testing on a couple of the hundreds of people's computers I have tested on, the colour can look a bit like a brown, however this is down to the screen - not the designer, i.e. me. Essentially, I haven't chosen a brown colour to make things look disgusting on purpose.

A positive is that those with poorer eyesight or vision issues have been quick to praise the high contrast so it does work for the majority.

Reply: Thanks. It's heartening to know that the work is appreciated. I've said it before but I'll say it again, our aim is to have one of the best council websites. That said we still have a little way to go! I'm not far off completing this search facility so I hope in the next couple of weeks it will be there to use. I'm glad that this shows the comment facility isn't a tick box exercise or an exercise in political correctness, but because we want to hear what you think, good and bad, so we can make this a high quality website.

Reply: I feel like saying sorry is no excuse for something that isn't right in the first place, none the less sorry that you found your visit unsuccessful. In any instance your comment, with others, have lead us to massively improve the planning and building control front page. Since then it has made it somewhat easier to find applications, comment on them, find out how to make an application and so forth. We are working to improve this section further but since the update we have received much more positive comments (see above) that things have improved.

What is 'alarming' is that before, our on-line planning system was something of a secret which is no good at all. That said, watch the homepage this week, a big change will happen to make our on-line services easier to get to.

This was also prompted by myself getting a letter from planning saying one of my neighbours wants to erect an extension (to which I have no problem with...) and decided to follow the letter. Well, I have to admit if I didn't know the website as I do I would have had some real troubles so hopefully the changes we worked with some users on have made a positive impact so that if you do get a letter, and then come to our website, it will make sense.

Reply: Good point. I have e-mailed the parking department and asked them whether the system does this and if not, can we get it to do it. I would want an e-mail receipt myself if I was using this facility.

Ok. First, sorry that the page isn't any good to you. However, unfortunately you haven't told me why you have found the page to be useless. As others have found I do read every comment and of most of them I do make the changes required. So, if you do happen to read this (or others) have found the Help and FAQs page useless (we also have people who have said the section is very useful) let us know:

• What was useless about it?
• What were you expecting when you visited the page?
• If you could change anything about the page what would you change?
• Did you find it confusing or was it well written?

The bottom line is we do listen and we do act on constructive criticism. I'm all for people telling me something isn't up to scratch or useless if they can tell me why. Otherwise, I have no idea where I and we as a whole have gone wrong.