1.3 million new visitors flock to council websites » Central Government » 24dash.com

New market research has revealed the impact of the 'Connect to your Council' campaign to drive take-up of online council services.

It highlights a significant increase in public awareness of these services and also in the numbers of people contacting the council via the Internet.

The research, which was carried out by Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) on behalf of the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), forms part of the evidence included in the Central Office of Information's evaluation study of the £5 million campaign published today.

According to the report, around 1.3 million new visitors were attracted to council websites during the summer as a direct result of the campaign.

The TNS research into public attitudes and behaviours amongst internet users also reveals some significant switching of channel loyalty, with rising website use and falling telephone use between April and July 2006. 

For example, research into the methods used to contact councils in the last 12 months reveals a rise of 67% in the number of people going directly to their council's website to find out about local services or carry out simple transactions. 

In contrast, the proportion of people who contacted their council by telephone fell by 6%.  During the course of campaign activity, council websites also overtook email as the leading online contact channel. 

It is estimated that encouraging more customers to go online will create over £1 billion efficiency savings nationally by 2008 for reinvestment elsewhere in front-line service delivery.

Highlighting the success of the award-winning campaign, figures show that more than 6,000 abandoned cars were reported online to councils in England in June alone via the campaign website at www.direct.gov.uk/mycouncil – enough to fill all the public parking spaces in a city the size of Cambridge. 

More than 5,000 people also reported potholes to their local authorities via the campaign website in June – up by over 2,000% on the Directgov pre campaign average, or more than enough to fill The Beatles' proverbial 2,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. 

TNS research also shows that the range of council services people believe they can access online increased significantly during the campaign. 

More people than ever before are now aware that they can apply for services online, seek information and advice, report problems, pay bills or set up direct debits, as well as take advantage of many more online council services.

Furthermore, of those respondents who recognised a campaign advertisement, over 20% said that they had already taken action, rising to over 50% who said that they intend to visit the local council's website in the next year as a direct result of seeing the advertising.  The net impact of such intentions would result in nearly 6 million new people visiting council websites.

Angela Smith, Under Secretary of State, praised the campaign's impact: "The results from our independent evaluation from the COI published today shows that the Take-Up Campaign has already alerted over a million citizens of the convenience of accessing council services online.

"Having used the service myself, I have seen first hand the real life benefits of local e-government which enables people to access services and information from their local authority 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is a ringing endorsement of our five year investment in e-government." 

The first phase of the 'Connect to your Council' campaign was launched in May 2006 running up to the beginning of July, where people only need to enter a post code, town or street name, to be directed to the relevant service page of their council's  website.