WEST Devon Borough Council has launched a new look website making it quicker and easier for residents to interact with the council.

Cllr Jeff Moody, lead member for ‘customer first’ said: ‘I cannot tell you how delighted we are to be able to bring this new site to our customers. 

‘We have known for a while that the old site was not able to provide customers with the level of service they now expect from a modern website.  Now we can say with confidence that the best way to access our services really is through our website and we hope our customers will see this for themselves when they experience the new site.’

Customers will notice the main focus of the site is offering them the opportunity to do things for themselves. This includes things like reporting missed waste collections, a new planning search, applying for benefits, setting up a council tax direct debit and viewing a council tax bill. 

The council has moved these tasks to the top of the homepage.  All of these functions for the first time on West Devon Borough Council’s website can be accessed through any device, a laptop, PC, tablet or mobile phone.

Cllr Moody continued: ‘We now live in a fast moving digital world where it is becoming more and more common for people to perform tasks online in their own time, rather than phone or visit in person.  We recognise this and have made it easier for customers to access our services in the same way.

‘I cannot underestimate the benefits for us and our customers of doing things online. By going online and applying for, reporting or telling us about things online, customers really are helping us save valuable taxpayers money.

‘Entering information into the website cuts out a whole level of administration, saving us and them time, and reducing the risk of mistakes caused by the double handling of information.’ 

Face to face interaction between a customer and a council officer costs the taxpayer between £8 and £14 a visit, a telephone transaction costs that taxpayer between £3-£5 a call, compared to the same task performed via the website, which costs the taxpayer 14p.

‘By performing these tasks for themselves, the data that the customers are inputting into the website is going straight into our back office system, no double handling of information, reducing the risk of data entry error and a much faster response time for the customer,’ added Cllr Moody.

West Devon has also changed the ‘my account’ function.  Cllr Moody continued: ‘We now realise that ‘my account’, which asked all customers to register before they performed simple tasks like reporting a missed waste collection or a fly tip, actually created barriers to doing it online.

‘Customers told the council that they did not feel the need to log in every time they wanted to communicate with them So on the new website, customers will no-longer need an account with the council to perform simple tasks.’ 

For a while other pages will divert back to the old website while the transition to the new site is taking place.  At this point the old ‘my account’ function will cease to exist in its current form and only those transactions which need an account for security reasons, such as council tax and benefits will require the user to log in.