Most of the content on this intranet is made up of ex county council information due to the county intranet being turned off. Please read the blog to find out more about how we have developed this new intranet and where you can go to find information that relates to you.
Request a change to the council’s websites
If you're responsible for updating content in your service, you can contact the Digital Team to request a change to an existing page by submitting a request.
Request a change or a new page
You should also get in touch with the team as early as possible when you are creating new content.
Our content designers are best placed to make these types of changes. They'll use their expertise to recommend the most user friendly approach.
New websites
Creating a new website needs careful consideration and planning to make sure it meets both the business and user need.
We can help you choose the right platform to meet these needs. We can design and build the website, create content and provide training so you can maintain the website.
There are other options available if you want a new website. Using a third party supplier is a more costly and time-consuming solution. However, in some cases, it can be the most suitable option.
Before you consider a microsite, please read our microsite policy that outlines risks and considerations.
Cumberland Council's microsite policy
How we work
The Digital Team take a task-focused approach to help people get straight to the information or service they need.
We want people to access information about us and our services as quickly as possible through our websites - to do this, we must take a task-focused and user-centred design approach.
Our main website is Cumberland.gov.uk. We also have over 10 other websites that are specific to some of the services we provide, these include Cumbria Safeguarding Children Partnership, Family Hubs and various partnership websites.
Any website we create becomes part of our online digital portfolio, therefore we must be represented appropriately.
We follow our digital style guides and standards across our online services which follow the principles set out in the GOV.UK style guide.
We aim for our websites to meet the World Wide Web Consortium Accessibility Guidelines (version 2.1) 'Double A' standard. This is currently the minimum standard for council websites.
Learn more about:
- why we need to adhere to the website accessibility regulations
- how to create accessible content
Writing for the web
We follow GOV.UK's writing style guide:
- be concise – make content brief and to the point
- meet the user need – publish only what users need to know to complete their task
- know your audience – their search terms, questions and how they read
- include keywords in content to boost search rankings
- use the active voice (not passive)
- break up text into subject areas with headings and sub-headings
- 'front load' headings, sub headings, titles, bullet points and links to put the most important information first
- use words that are easy to understand – good content is easy to read
Most people that visit Cumberland.gov.uk or our other websites access it through Google. We therefore write our web content in a way to make sure that our web pages appear as high as possible in search engines such as Google.
Working with the Digital Team
The Digital Team manage all our websites using a content management system (CMS) called Drupal.
Content for Cumberland.gov.uk is created by the Digital Team, with services responsible for the accuracy of the content and supplying factual updates.
We also have content owners from our services who have access to specific sections of the websites to make updates to content. Most of these updates come to our Digital Team for approval before being published.