Come on RMBC, get your website working properly!

At this time of year Rothpol likes to spend a few idle minutes having a look at the interests declarations online published on the council’s website, the 28 day time limit for declarations now having expired.

Readers should know that a major update of the council’s website took place a few weekends ago and I thought it prudent to wait for it to ‘bed in’ for a while before making any serious attempts to use it.

I clicked on my bookmarked link to the council’s website and easily navigated to the section where councillors information is to be found, so far so good. Starting at the beginning I clicked on the link for Shabana Ahmed it gave almost no information save for her address. There was no link for an interests declaration made since her election for the first time in May 2012, either?

In view of this, I decided to check Jahangir Akhtar’s page next as I knew there had been a link there in the recent past. Yes there was the comforting sight of a link, I clicked on it with confidence. Imagine my surprise then, that the download offered was for another new councillor, Lauren Astbury and not Jahangir Akhtar as the link indicated. Oh dear!

I have railed at RMBC’s website in the past, to no avail it would seem. This information must be available for us to examine at our leisure. The fact that it isn’t, is an outrage to democracy and a major failing, in the connected world we now live in.

Come on RMBC, get your website working properly!

I nearly forgot to mention, that the political lead on this one is down to Jahangir Akhtar.