Online services for business 'at best patchy' finds Socitm Insight.

A survey by Socitm Insight for the Department for Business shows implementation of an EU directive to make it easy for businesses to find out about licensing, regulations etc is patchy at best.

The EU Services Directive was intended to reduce government red tape for new and existing businesses, whether based in the UK or across the rest of the European Union. For competent authorities (ie local authorities and others involved in regulating businesses) the Directive provided an opportunity to review and improve ways of handling online enquiries from the business sector.

However, according to Better connected for business: implementation of the EU Services Directive in the UK in 2010, of the 540 competent authorities surveyed, including 433 local authorities and 107 professional institutions and government agencies, only 26 websites (5%) were rated as very good, with another 99 (18%) considered satisfactory. 320 websites (59%) were rated as poor and at the remaining 94 websites (19%) reviewers could find no relevant information.

To take one specific question applying to all five areas sampled, the provision of online application forms, these were available in just 21% of possible cases.

Local authorities performed better overall than the other competent authorities. While 14% of local authority websites provided no information about the selected survey topics in, more than twice as many (32%) of other competent authority websites had no information.

Martin Greenwood, Programme Manager for Socitm Insight said:

'Typically, the needs of individual citizens and individual customers have taken priority over the needs of businesses. The fact that there were only 8% of visits to local authority websites in May 2010 for business purposes, even though this still represents 2.3m visits in that month, is both a symptom and a cause of the problem'.

Evidence from the survey suggests the poor performance is due to inconsistent implementation within organisations and lack of attention to the customer journey on the website. For local authorities, this raises important questions about local authority priorities for businesses - including commitment to private sector led regeneration - and also about governance of the website, especially where the findings indicate that little or no effort has been made to comply with the directive.

Despite the overall result, 23 councils are named in the report as having implemented the regulations very well, not just conforming with the letter but applying the spirit of the legislation.

Further information

Vicky Sargent, Socitm Press Office
Tel: 07726 601 139 email: vicky.sargent@socitm.net

Martin Greenwood, Programme Manager, Socitm Insight
Tel: 01926 498703 or 07967 383755 e-mail: martin.greenwood@socitm.net

Notes for Editors

The EU Services Directive was implemented in the UK by the Provision of Services Regulations 2009 that came into force at the end of December 2009 and requires that anybody wishing to set up a business to provide services should be able find information online about all the required formalities, and make any necessary applications and payments online.

Better connected for business: implementation of the EU Services Directive in the UK in 2010 runs 90 pages and is free to download from www.socitm.net. The report looks at a sample of  formalities covered by the Services Directive and is supported by detailed information relating to individual councils. This is also linked from www.businesslink.gov.uk. The full results of the survey for each local authority, and separately for every other competent authority, are listed. The summary of results (Appendix 1 of the full report) is also listed.

BIS is running two online resources to assist local and other competent authorities: http://elmsportal.businesslink.gov.uk which details the implementation procedure and its dedicated community of practice at http://communities.idea.gov.uk/ (http://tinyurl.com/EUSD-COP for direct access) which brings together more than a 1000 professionals involved in implementing the Directive as well as the Socitm reviewing team

Socitm Insight runs the Web improvement and usage community within the IDeA Communities of Practice. The space enables networking and the sharing of ideas and best practice around all aspects of website development, content and take-up. Nearly 900 people have joined the community since the space was launched last year. The community will host discussion around this report and anyone interested is welcome to join and get involved. Registration is at www.communities.idea.gov.uk.