Departmental Internet

Jenny Willott
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many complaints his Department received regarding difficulties using its website in each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement.

Phil Hope
The Department received the following number of complaints regarding difficulties operating the Department’s website in each of the last three years.

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|                                               |Number|
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|2009-101                                       |262   |
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|2008-09                                        |255   |
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|2007-08                                        |349   |
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|1 Figures for March 2010 are not yet available.|      |
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Jenny Willott
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much his Department spent on external website design consultants in each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement.

Phil Hope
The Department operates two main websites:

1. The Department’s corporate website

www.dh.gov.uk

2. NHS Choices

www.nhs.uk

For the Department’s corporate website, the following amounts have been spent on external website design consultancy:

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|       |£        |
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|2007-08|34,250.00|
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|2008-09|6,748.19 |
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|2009-10|9,949.00 |
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NHS Choices development and delivery is provided through an outsourced contract. From June 2007 to November 2008 this was provided through Doctor Foster Intelligence. Since November 2008, this has been provided by Capita. The overall contract value for Capita for the design, development and delivery of the NHS Choices digital service is £60 million over three years.

It is not possible to disaggregate specific website design elements from this contract as they are inherent in the improvement and delivery of the overall service.

Since 27 June 2007 the Department has reduced the total number of websites that it operates from 196 to 71, to meet its obligations under Transformational Government. The Department will continue to reduce this number to just two websites by the Cabinet Office deadline of July 2011.

Given the high number of websites that were in existence between March 2007 and January 2010, it is not possible to provide information on costs for all of these, as this would incur disproportionate costs.