5 June 2006

New figures show that over the last two years, the number of people visiting and using Peterborough City Council's website has sharply increased.

The amount of website visitors rose by 37 per cent from 2003-04 to 2005-06, with 697,511 people accessing the website in the last financial year. Page hits went up by 72 per cent between the same period and 3.45 million were recorded in 2005-06.

During this time, a range of improvements have been made to the website to make it more attractive and user-friendly to residents, very useful and efficient and to meet increasingly high government standards.

Councillor Matthew Dalton, the city council's cabinet member for customer focus and communications, said: "The website has become far more sophisticated of late and now offers an increasing range of interactive functions.

"For example, residents can make online payments for council services and online bookings and payments for Key Theatre tickets, sessions at sports centres and special activities. They can also use online forms to submit planning applications and to report environmental problems."

Visitors to UK council websites are currently totalling around 13 million per month and a study carried out last year by the European Union stated that British councils have the most sophisticated online services for the public out of the countries examined.

© Adfero Ltd

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