Test results for Supplying the council - find out how
Here is the table of test results for this task. The score on each row is out of a possible total of 20, and the importance column is a rating of 1-5 according to how important testers considered being able to complete this task was.
Filter within results: or click headings to sort.
Council | Navigation | A-Z | Site search | Score | Tests | Importance | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Argyll and Bute Council | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | 20 | 3 | |
Birmingham City Council | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | Easy | 18 | 3 | |
Birmingham City Council | Gave up | Gave up | Difficult | Gave up | -8 | 5 | |
Birmingham City Council | Easy | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | 3 | 3 | |
Bracknell Forest Council | Easy | Gave up | Gave up | Difficult | -2 | 3 | |
Brent Council | Difficult | Very easy | Very easy | Difficult | 7 | 1 | |
Cheshire East Council | Gave up | Gave up | Gave up | Gave up | -12 | 3 | |
City of Edinburgh Council | Very easy | Easy | Very easy | Easy | 16 | 3 | |
Copeland Borough Council | Very easy | Very easy | Easy | Gave up | 5 | 3 | |
Coventry City Council | Gave up | Very easy | Very easy | Difficult | 3 | 3 | |
Hertfordshire County Council | Easy | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | 3 | 3 | |
Leicester City Council | Gave up | Gave up | Very easy | Gave up | -4 | 3 | |
Liverpool City Council | Very easy | Easy | Easy | Easy | 14 | 3 | |
London Borough of Lewisham | Gave up | Difficult | Very easy | Difficult | 4 | 5 | |
London Borough of Richmond upon Thames | Gave up | Gave up | Gave up | Gave up | -12 | 1 | |
Manchester City Council | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | Easy | 13 | 3 | |
Newcastle City Council | Easy | Easy | Very easy | Difficult | 7 | 0 | |
Newham London | Very easy | Easy | Difficult | Easy | 12 | 1 | |
Nottingham City Council | Gave up | Easy | Very easy | Very easy | 10 | 0 | |
Plymouth City Council | Difficult | Very easy | Easy | Difficult | 5 | 3 | |
South Tyneside Council | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | 10 | 3 | |
Wandsworth Council | Easy | Very easy | Very easy | Easy | 11 | 3 | |
West Berkshire Council | Untested | Very easy | Very easy | Very easy | 5 | 3 | |
Wokingham Borough Council | Gave up | Gave up | Very easy | Gave up | -9 | 3 |
Specific comments made about this task
Argyll and Bute Council - 2014-05-10
I find the home page a little too busy but once you move off that page and go deeper into the council website the other pages are less cluttered, cleaner and clearer. I preferred the pages subsequent to home page. If this was a site I had to use I may google further into the web rather than suffer the home page. Made my eyes ache.
Birmingham City Council - 2013-12-18
Internal search took me to a completely different set of pages.
Birmingham City Council - 2014-02-26
Took me 10 mins to fill in the FinditinBirmingham form once I did find the correct page on BCC website, and it wouldn't let me save my profile, so I ended up not being any the wiser about how I can supply the Council.
There appeared to be some good links to supplying the government, but these all went to 404 pages.
Birmingham City Council - 2016-07-18
Was very easy to get to the place where opportunities are advertised, but I don't like that I had to log in to a site to see those opportunities
Copeland Borough Council - 2014-02-12
Possibly one of the easiest navigation routes I've seen, with the link to the relevant page being one of (the few) links under Business on the global navigation. The massive picture for four sentences of text does detract from the experience a bit, though. The Google search result would have been better had it had the council listed on the results page to signpost to The Chest in order to provide greater confidence that The Chest is the legitimate route.
Hertfordshire County Council - 2014-02-25
Three clicks from the homepage get you to the Supply Hertfordshire website, with lots of information about becoming a supplier to public sector organisations in the county.
Leicester City Council - 2023-08-18
This was dreadful.
London Borough of Lewisham - 2014-05-12
The problem is potentially in the term Procurement. If I wanted to understand supping services the term likely requires too high a readability level for the average person to know. The task has it right - "Suppling the Council (Procurement)"
London Borough of Richmond upon Thames - 2014-02-19
Google search came up with relevant page, but page did not provide a copy of the relevant form.
Ditto for internal search.
A to Z - nothing under "supplier" or "approved supplier".
Didn't get anywhere from home page - long winding trail through Business pages.
Home page layout differed from content pages so that - for example - search box not in same place.
Nice looking site, but a failure for this task.
Newcastle City Council - 2015-02-11
Very easy to find the relevant pages but made slightly more difficult by having to visit a number of external sites for further information.
With the internal search and the Google search you can only find the relevant pages if you look for "doing business with the council" and not "supplying the council". It requires you to know the exact phrasing/terminology
Newham London - 2020-02-12
It was fairly easy but I suspect the terms used in the test are a bit government focussed in the first place - would a business really think in terms of 'supply the council'? Suspect they would think more of 'pitching' or 'selling to'.
West Berkshire Council - 2014-02-10
For smaller business, I found a reference to "Winning Council Business - a guide for small businesses". There was nowhere to download it. The text said it was being written but the page was dated 16/01/13. A year ago. The guide should be available by now.
For bigger businesses, I was given a link to "Tenders Direct", a national database of tenders not at all focused on West Berkshire.
It was easy to find the relevant page on the Council's website, but the information about how to be a supplier to the Council was not there. Had this been a real task, I would have emailed the Council.
What goods and services does the Council need? Who should I approach? When? I can't tell.