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.

CouncilNavigationA-ZGoogleSite searchScoreTestsImportance
Argyll and Bute CouncilVery easyVery easyVery easy203
Birmingham City CouncilVery easyVery easyEasy183
Birmingham City CouncilGave upDifficultGave up-85
Birmingham City CouncilVery easyVery easyVery easy33
Bracknell Forest CouncilGave upGave upDifficult-23
Brent CouncilVery easyVery easyDifficult71
Cheshire East CouncilGave upGave upGave up-123
City of Edinburgh CouncilEasyVery easyEasy163
Copeland Borough CouncilVery easyEasyGave up53
Coventry City CouncilVery easyVery easyDifficult33
Hertfordshire County CouncilVery easyVery easyVery easy33
Leicester City CouncilGave upVery easyGave up-43
Liverpool City CouncilEasyEasyEasy143
London Borough of LewishamDifficultVery easyDifficult45
London Borough of Richmond upon ThamesGave upGave upGave up-121
Manchester City CouncilVery easyVery easyEasy133
Newcastle City CouncilEasyVery easyDifficult70
Newham LondonEasyDifficultEasy121
Nottingham City CouncilEasyVery easyVery easy100
Plymouth City CouncilVery easyEasyDifficult53
South Tyneside CouncilVery easyVery easyVery easy103
Wandsworth CouncilVery easyVery easyEasy113
West Berkshire CouncilVery easyVery easyVery easy53
Wokingham Borough CouncilGave upVery easyGave up-93

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.