Southwark Council website improvements

New website programme overview, what we are currently working on, future improvements, user research activities and how you can help us.

Project overview

We are making changes to our website, to give people using it a better experience. Our existing website has not been updated for a number of years and we know it can be hard for people to use or find the information that they need.

We are making improvements in stages, and the first stage is now complete. In the first stage, we have made some changes to the way the website looks and feels. We have introduced a cleaner and more modern homepage, and changed the style of some other pages.

The new design will:

introduce a new look, with improved accessibility for those who have disabilities (for example, better colour contrast for users with visual impairments) and more consistent with Government Digital Service standards and best practice
improve menu layouts on the homepage and make it easier to find out about events within the borough
improve mobile responsiveness (make the website work better on mobile)

You may notice that some sites provided to us by third parties, that you access from the Southwark Council website, look and feel slightly different from the main website. We plan to make key external sites match the style of the main website in the near future as part of our website improvement work.

Future improvements

Throughout the rest of 2023, the Southwark Web Team will be working hard to bring additional improvements to the website. This includes rewriting the content on the southwark.gov.uk website and putting resident need at the heart of the content, to make it easier to read and for people to find what they need.

We will also be making a number of other improvements, such as improving the site search which we know can be difficult to use, and changing the way we manage the website, to improve how it functions.

We will be sharing more information on the project in the coming weeks and months.

Page last updated: 11 October 2023

Name	Cookie purpose description	Provider	Expiry
CookieNotice	Used to hold the selections you make as to which cookies you allow from the site.	southwark.gov.uk	6 months
Bridge.Auth	used to hold authentication information	southwark.gov.uk	Session
ASP.NET_SessionId	used to hold session information	southwark.gov.uk	Session
ProcessDisplayOptionsActionFilter.Pref	This cookie is used to remember display settings for colour contrast and font sizes set by the user in the accessibility options panel.	southwark.gov.uk	30 days
visid_incap_#	Preserves users states across page requests.	southwark.gov.uk	1 year
incap_ses_#	Preserves users states across page requests.	southwark.gov.uk	Session
AWSELBCORS	Used to distribute traffic to the website on several servers in order to optimise response times.	www.servmetric.com	5 minutes
local_storage_support_test	The cookie is used in context with the local-storage function in the browser. This function allows the web site to load faster by pre-loading certain procedures.	twitter.com	Persistent
CalloutDisplay	This cookie is used to record what callouts have been dismissed during a session to ensure they do not re-appear.	southwark.gov.uk	Session
ApplicationGatewayAffinityCORS	Essential cookie used for web server load balancing	southwark.gov.uk	session
ApplicationGatewayAffinity	Essential cookie for web server load balancing	southwark.gov.uk	session

Name	Cookie purpose description	Provider	Expiry
___utmvc#	Collects information on visitor behaviour on multiple websites. This information is used on the website, in order to optimise the relevance of advertisement.	southwark.gov.uk	1 day
r/collect	This cookie is used to send data to Google Analytics about the visitor's device and behaviour. It tracks the visitor across devices and marketing channels.	google-analytics.com	Session

Name	Cookie purpose description	Provider	Expiry
_dc_gtm_UA-#	Used by Google Tag Manager to control the loading of a Google Analytics script tag.	google-analytics.com	1 day
_ga	Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website.	google-analytics.com	2 years
collect	Used to send data to Google Analytics about the visitor's device and behaviour. Tracks the visitor across devices and marketing channels.	google-analytics.com	Session
_gid	Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website.	southwark.gov.uk	1 day

Southwark Council website improvements

Project overview

Future improvements

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