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The second question posed was "How do we set up web sites to
help us?"
The design of any site naturally depends on its
purpose. The two largest categories of IoA members are
local government and consultants and should therefore be
considered separately.
Local Government
In my view, most "noise"
visitors to a local authority site will be complaining about
noise; accordingly, there are a number of features that
could appear on a local, authority site -
- Absolute Minimum - the visitor
should be able to search for "noise"
- they may not know that "Public Protection" or
"Environmental Health" deal with noise; also
provide the departmental
telephone number for dealing with noise
- The site could explain how noise
complaints are dealt with and link to
Bothered
by Noise.
- If visitors can complain about noise
by e-mail, it makes the complainants easy to reply to - an
autoresponder can let people know that their complaints have
been heard - free ones are
available.
- If complaints can be logged by
filling in an on-line form, giving the postcode of the
complainant, the date, time, description of the noise, and
source if known, then the data exists electronically and can
easily be processed in spreadsheets reports, plotted on maps
and so on.
- If you provide log sheets, the site
could contain instructions and blank log sheets for the
visitor to print off.
- If you leave DAT recorders with
complainants, there
could be instructions with photographs on the site of how to
use the DAT.
We can look at how local authorities currently use the
Net. As a representative sample of local authority
websites, the Institute of Acoustics Register lists 23 North-West
authorities as having IoA members. The
Tagish
site purports to have a full list of local authority sites; in
2000 the
results of a review of the 23 authorities were not inspiring.
| Authority |
IoA
lists e-mail? |
Web
Site? |
Meets
Minimum Std? |
| Allerdale |
no |
yes |
no |
| Bolton |
no |
yes |
no |
| Bury |
no |
yes |
yes |
| Carlisle |
yes |
tourists' site |
no |
| Chester |
yes |
yes |
no (N=National Lottery
Advice) |
| Chorley |
no |
yes |
no (search broken) |
| City of Man |
no |
yes |
yes (search broken/ A-Z
worked) |
| Lancaster |
no |
yes |
no (search broken) |
| Liverpool |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Macclesfield |
yes |
yes |
no |
| Oldham |
no |
yes |
yes (search difficult to
find) |
| Pendle |
no |
no |
no |
| Preston |
no |
no |
no |
| Ribble Valley |
no |
yes |
no |
| Rochdale |
no |
yes |
no |
| Rossendale |
no |
no |
no |
| Sefton |
no |
yes (ish) |
no |
| St Helens |
yes |
yes (ish) |
no |
| Tameside |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Vale Royal |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Warrington |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| West Lancs |
no |
yes (Not Authrsd) |
no |
| Wigan |
no |
yes |
yes (ish - didn't give phone
No.) |
Only one-third of the sample met the
minimum standard; less than a fifth got "yes" in each
of the test categories. Conclusion - "C minus Could
try harder".
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