It’s been a busy week. That little holiday you get from meetings after the Christmas break is officially over. Finding time to write weeknotes has been harder but definitely worth it to stop and reflect.

Strategic review of charging

Work is ongoing to create simple charging pages for all regimes affected by the review of charging. We know that cost is always in the top three user needs on any site and that charging information is difficult to find and understand on our site, mainly being on the legally-based Charging Scheme page. By creating simple charging pages for each regime, users will be able to quickly find the charge for their particular activity. Ideally, we would be using user research to understand the terminology operators use for their activity and enable us to categorise on the site in a way users find intuitive. By categorising them how NRW organises itself, we make it more difficult for users to find. We also come across issues where a facility crosses regimes, for example waste installations. Does the user think of themselves as an operator of an installation or a waste facility or something else entirely?

Revisiting flood risk activity permits

Cast your mind back to the first lockdown. We were all working at home in a heatwave and allowed one walk a day. We published our first online application form. ‘Lifting and shifting’ ‘B8 - flood risk activity new bespoke permit’ from a word doc to Smart Survey.

Two years and 675 completed applications later the Development and Flood Risk team got in touch. They were getting feedback from users that the language isn’t clear if you’re filling in the form on behalf of someone else.

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We did a a review and saw that:

  • the path and language isn’t clear for agents and consultants
  • we ask for lots of different contact info which isn’t always needed
  • the are unnecessary questions that could be removed

This week we’ve completed a test form that:

  • allows the user to select if they are completing the form on behalf of someone else
  • uses skip logic to tailor the questions and language to the user

We have some other minor tweaks to make questions clearer and improve the document uploads. Once we have the ok from the team we will make the form live and see how users are finding it. It will be interesting to see how many agents / consultants are completing the form for others - giving us a better picture and understanding of the users.

Permit applications

We’re also making improvements to water discharge permit forms, bringing some guidance on answering questions into the form itself and creating Smart Survey forms for change, surrender and transfer a permit. Thanks to the omnipresent Dave Jones for all his help with these and the associated guidance. We’ve previously split some common activities out from more general permits to help users understand which permit they need. Making permit applications more specific enables us to name the permit as the activity the user is carrying out (for example ‘Permit to dispose of waste sheep dip’) making it much simpler for a user to find and understand which permit they need. We’re starting work on a form for medium combustion plant permit applications which would normally have entailed a bespoke installations environmental permit application. Working with the subject matter expert and in agreement with permitting, we’ll be tailoring the electronic application form to only ask the questions actually required and therefore make the form simpler to complete.

Online forms - user feedback

The other consistent feedback we’ve received is that people:

  • want to be able to see the entire form before they start
  • want to be able to go back and forward between sections easily

We are seeing this feedback on almost all forms. It’s not something we can do anything about at the moment but Lucinda has raised it with Smart Survey.

Regulatory decisions

We’re currently working on a couple of regulatory decisions (temporary storage of silage and slurry and medium combustion plants). These are tricky to deal with as users are highly unlikely to be searching for them (they’re similar to consultations in this regard). The practical information they contain is being incorporated into the task-based page they relate to but where Regulatory Decisions should sit on the site is something we need to work on.

Problems with pre-applications

We’ve noticed that our customer hub are getting queries about our different pre-app services. Phil, Lucinda, Sam and Kim are looking into this. They’re in the early stages of gathering information about the different services we offer, what they’re all called, and what the process is for users.

Our content and publishing manual

Kim has published the accessible docs guidance on our website . It’s looking great!

Thanks to Sam and Kim giving this a big push recently. Our content and publishing manual now has:

  • our A-Z style guide
  • writing accessible documents guidance
  • our proposition: what does and doesn’t go on our website
  • Weeknotes from the team

And there will be more to come!

Some other stuff we’re doing

Sohpie has been working with DXW to audit the ‘About us’ section of the website. We look forward to working more on this and improving this area of the site.

DXW have organised more ‘introduction to user-centred content’ training in February.

Control of Agricultural Pollution Regulations - we’ve updated the Storage of silage and slurry page to reflect the new legislation which came into force at the start of the year.

Reservoir guidance for owners and inspecting engineers – multiple new task-based pages being published on an ongoing basis.

Emissions trading guidance pages (x6) published.