The latest run-down of what we’ve been up to in the Ditigal Team!

Trying a new way of working

We’re trying out a new way of working in our team to make sure that we’re allocating time for both:

  • Ongoing content design projects, which are based on user needs and have been prioritised by NRW
  • New content design requests

The ongoing project work will involve:

  • Forming multi-disciplinary, including content designers, subject matter experts, and a user researcher where necessary
  • Using two content designers for each project
  • Devoting three days a week to the project

The new approach aims to make sure that we’re spending most of our time on work that will have the biggest impact on users.

Alt text

Planning how to publish SoNaRR 2025

Mary and James have been mapping our draft State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR) 2025.

We publish SoNaRR every five years, and it involves gathering a huge amount of information from across the organisation. It’s always been a challenge to present this information in a well-structured, logical way that meets the needs of our users.

Mapping the draft structure will help us:

  • Make sure the pages and sections link together correctly
  • Identify any gaps in the content

We’ll publish SoNaRR 2025 in December.

Investigating how to add Gov Pay to our licence applications

We’re continuing work on Gov Pay for the marine band 1 form. It has been a real team effort with input from across the team:

  • Sam has been working with Toyah to add info to Band 1 marine licence application
  • Phil is working with Smart Survey to create links between Gov Pay and Smart Survey
  • Alex is working on the governance / finance side of things
  • Laura is arranging the translations and branding
  • Kim has created a Gov Pay button for our online forms

There’s a lot going on here - definitely something we need to explain properly in a future blog!

Tips to reducing file size on large documents

Sophie and Kim wanted to share their tips for reducing the size of PDFs.

This week they published some time-sensitive public notices and consultations. One of the new consultations contained a large PDF. Sophie and Kim had to split the file and compress it to make the content accessible to our users.

It’s better to write your content with size limitations in mind than have to post-process a large document:

  • Most platforms have size limits for files
  • Your PDF will need be under 20 – 25 MB if you want to email it
  • Users consistently tell us that too much information can be off-putting

Remember the following when you write content for the web or a document:

  • Large images significantly increase the file size, especially if they are not compressed or optimised
  • Get rid of unnecessary content, including comments, blank pages or text blocks that don’t contain important information

  • Use “Save as Other” in Acrobat Pro: Go to File > Save as Other > Reduced Size PDF to save a copy with a reduced file size.

    Alt text

Deciding on the next steps in our species licensing improvements

Alex, Sam, Phil and Laura met with the species licencing team leaders to discuss rearranging the bird licensing pages. Alex showed the design in test – everyone seemed happy, and Alex agreed to share the content so it could be fact checked.

Work on the fish-eating birds content and application forms is almost complete. There are:

  • six new content pages
  • two new online application forms

These have been developed collaboratively, co-writing the content with subject matter experts and working together on the application form flows.

It has now been agreed that the next focus should be the change license form, then the Bird control application form.

Publishing updates to our Flood Map for Planning

James published the latest update to our Flood Map for Planning. This is tool that is mainly used by local authorities to assess the flood risk to and from housing developments.

The list of updates show the locations where there has either been a change in extents to Flood Zones 2 and 3 or where there has been an addition, removal or modification to the Technical Advice Note (TAN) 15 Defended Zones.

Website tidy-up day

We had another website tidy-up day on Friday. This is a monthly opportunity to organise and clear out some of the documents, images and folders that have built up over the years.

Mindfulness sessions

Mary has been joining 15-minute mindfulness sessions for NRW staff. These are held every Tuesday at 1pm. This sounds like such a fab idea - we asked Mary to tell us more about it….

“The idea is that you can take part at your desk, and it’s a chance to take a moment to pause in our busy lives. The session is different each week, sometimes it involves breathing exercises and sometimes it’s a simple body scan.

“Sometimes we focus on an everyday object like a cup of tea, taking into account how it feels, looks, smells and tastes but my favourite session so far was using each sense to notice my surroundings. Lowri guides us through each session and I always feel relaxed and re-energised afterwards. I thoroughly recommend giving it a go!”

The sessions are organised by Lowri Evans. If you work for NRW and want to join, you can contact Lowri directly. But if you don’t work for NRW then there’s various mindfulness sessions you can try on YouTube.

Alt Text

Other things we’ve been working on…

  • Mary joined the CDPS webinar about doing content crits. has been doing online content design courses. She’s also signed up for FutureLearn’s ‘Intro to Content Design’ course
  • Lucinda has been progressing a way to manage flood message content in our Flood Warning Information Service for Wales. Lucinda has been working with the team on this since the discovery phase, so she is pleased to see that it’s going to be built in the next few weeks.
  • Shaun has mainly been continuing work on Planning and Development guidance. Advice for developers on citing telecommunications equipment has been published. Advice on air quality implications in planning applications is nearing finalisation. Guidance on dewatering mines, quarries and civil engineering projects incorporating a regulatory decision is about to be published. Guidance on emission trading schemes has been amended.