Sefton Council’s news site My Sefton will be decommissioned next year.
The website, which has been used by the council to publish press releases and key updates “no longer services the needs of the council” according to the corporate communications manager Elena Lloyd.
Speaking at a meeting of the borough’s overview and scrutiny committee last night, where she presented a report into the council’s communications activity for 2022, Ms Lloyd said it would be better to “integrate the [information] with the main website rather than sending people somewhere else for information.”
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She added: “I don’t see how that helps us. Why take people to another website from social media when we can take them to the main one and they can pay their council tax bill at the same time?”
Ms Lloyd said that in previous years there had been a “trend” to set up council news websites, and while some councils, such as Liverpool, Knowsley and Wirral had retained theirs, other councils such as St Helens had taken the decision to decommission their sites.
She said: “It’s not a judgement about what’s the right or wrong way to go about it, it’s different and nuanced for each council.”
The main webpage for Sefton Council contains 2000 separate pages managed by 70 web content editors. There were 5 million unique page views last year with the most popular council page by far being about bin collections.
Other popular pages related to council tax and jobs and training opportunities.
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