Test results for Wychavon District 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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TaskNavigationA-ZGoogleSite searchReadabilityScoreTestsImportance
Address - change mine on council systems
Adult education courses - find information
Antisocial behaviour - complain about it
Blue badge - apply for one
Broken street lights - report
Bulky waste or other special waste collection - book
Complain about something the council has done
Council housing - apply for it
Council meeting - read the last full council minutes
Council news - find it
Council tax - pay itUntestedEasyEasyDifficult743
Council tax / housing benefit - apply
Council tip - find a nearby one
Councillors - find who mine are
Cycling strategy - find it
Death - register one
Economic condition and strategy for the area - find it
Elections - find out when the next ones areUntestedVery easyDifficultDifficult643
Employment help for people with disabilities - find information on
Events - find council ones
Flood protection - find information
Food hygiene problem - report oneUntestedGave upGave upDifficult243
Freedom of Information Act request - make one
Housing repair - request one
Jobs - find a council job
Leisure centres close to me - find oneUntestedDifficultGave upUntested363
Leisure discount card - apply for one
Library book - renew
Local history - find out about
Local library opening hours - find themUntestedUntestedGave upUntested123
Local services and information on a map - look atUntestedDifficultDifficultVery hard343
Market stall trading - find information about
Meals on Wheels - find information
Missed bin collection - complain about one
Noise nuisance - complain about it
Open Data - find some
Parking - find out how much it costsUntestedVery easyVery easyDifficult843
Parking fine - pay oneUntestedEasyEasyDifficult743
Petitions - create one
Planning application - comment on oneUntestedUntestedUntestedVery hard623
Planning committee meeting - find when the next one is
Planning or building control violation - report one
Planning permission - apply for itUntestedEasyEasyDifficult643
Population and census information - find itUntestedEasyEasyEasy743
Pothole - report one
Public toilets - find them
Read the council's greenhouse gas emissions report for the previous year
Regulation of children on stage, film, and television - find informationUntestedGave upGave upUntested133
School places - apply for one
School term dates - find them
Scrutiny committee reports and minutes - find them
Senior staff and politicians in the council - find their namesUntestedDifficultDifficultEasy443
Small business support - find information
Social media accounts - find them
Stopping smoking services - find information
Supplying the council - find out how
Sustainability and climate change - find information on
Taxi driver - complain about oneUntestedGave upGave upUntested133
Taxi licence - apply for one
Telephone number - find the main one
Trading Standards - complain about a dodgy item from a shop
Travellers - find information about themUntestedDifficultDifficultVery hard343
Tree preservation order - apply for one
Unitary Development Plan / Local Development Plan - find it
Voting - register toUntestedVery easyVery easyDifficult943
Vulnerable adult - express concern about one
Vulnerable child - express concern about oneUntestedDifficultGave upDifficult343
Watch a webcast of a recent council or committee meeting
Welfare reform - find information about
Youth clubs in the area - find information
TotalsNavigationA-ZGoogleSite searchReadabilityScoreTests 
Total scores680857651280  
Number of tests180161713 64 
Usability Index (total score ÷ number of tests)405444  

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

Council tax - pay it - 2017-07-20
Have to admit I'm surprised that the search term 'pay council tax' doesn't result in the council tax payment page being top of the results list...

Elections - find out when the next ones are - 2017-07-21
Elections main page details the work of the electoral and registration services - you have to click on a link labelled 'current elections' to find the dates of the next elections. For the Google search at least the text preview on the results page was more explicit.

Food hygiene problem - report one - 2017-07-20
Navigation was very difficult - starting off was not easy in the first place and relied on knowledge of council structure, and many clicks eventually took me to a page on a completely different website which told me I had to phone up to report it. Neither of the searches pulled up anything useful.

Leisure centres close to me - find one - 2017-07-20
Having to agree to terms and conditions before using a basic function (find my nearest) on the website? Seriously?! Search box only on the home page? Seriously?!

Leisure centres close to me - find one - 2019-10-10
I didn't notice the left nav when trying to navigate from the home page, although I went to the correction section first time. Both searches took me to a page that wasn't about leisure centres specifically, but after some looking around I noticed the leisure link in the left nav.

Local services and information on a map - look at - 2017-07-20
Forced me to tick a box to accept some terms and conditions, which then took me to overly detailed maps including property boundaries. The property details page itself was quite good in the options it offered, though was marginally reminiscent of the early 20th century in design...

Parking - find out how much it costs - 2017-07-20
You have to scroll down the parking page (past a big picture of some cars parked in a car park) before you get to a link to a page containing a list of areas where there are car parks.

Parking fine - pay one - 2017-07-20
I assume people paying parking fines in Wychavon will know the difference between a ZW PCN and a WH PCN... I don't like this combined payment form where the user has to select from a dropdown rather than selecting what they're paying beforehand, but that's a personal observation rather than an objective one. It's good that the PCN info page uses the term 'parking fine', but you have to read on down the page for information about paying it.

Planning application - comment on one - 2017-07-21
Those graphics on the planning main page are *so* 1999... The readability of the relevant pages was excessively jargon-heavy and excessively wordy; I suspect more people are put off making legitimate comments than are discouraged from making trivial ones by this.

Planning permission - apply for it - 2017-07-20
Too many clicks before you're eventually taken to the national planning portal. Advice and guidance sections beforehand poorly structured. SEO for Google search not good as it brings up applications searching before making applications.

Population and census information - find it - 2017-07-21
I knew that looking under Community and Living would be a likely place to find it; I don't know if normal people would likely look for it there. Ward profiles were .pdf documents; they were reasonably good with nice dashboard graphs and charts, though I would have preferred an HTML executive summary for each ward. Census information wasn't present - it just linked to a central census website without a direct link to the specific Wychavon information.

Senior staff and politicians in the council - find their names - 2017-07-21
As a general point about the whole site across all tasks - the drop-down menu for 'More services' is broken, because if your browser window isn't deep enough you can't get to the bottom of the list. On searches it was easy to find the senior management team, but I gave up trying to find out who the senior councillors are.

Travellers - find information about them - 2017-07-20
An internal search did at least bring up some information about planning permission for Travellers' sites. In .pdf files. And the Google search at least pulled up an 18 month old council news story about a consultation.

Vulnerable child - express concern about one - 2017-07-20
At least the Google search brought up a page about safeguarding, although that is a jargon term. I also had to read through to find the information about how to phone up to report a concern.
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