Websites Benchmark Report
2024 UK Councils
Acquia conducted an analysis on UK Council’s websites in 2021, and again in 2024. See how the two analyses compare. In this report, you can find the top performers in digital accessibility, content quality assurance, response time, performance, and SEO.
Top 5 Websites Overall
In the overall score category, we highlight the best UK Council websites in terms of SEO, response time, performance, and accessibility.
We scanned a sample of 500 pages from the main, public-facing UK Council websites using Acquia Optimize’s Web Governance software during a two-week period in February 2024. Now we are comparing these results to the results from our 2021 report on the same UK Councils.
The champions with overall scores ranking in the top 5 for this report are listed below.
Overall Ranking | UK | Overall Ranking | UK |
|---|---|---|---|
1st | Worcestershire County Council | 1st | Cumbria County Council |
2nd | Cambridgeshire County Council | 2nd | Somerset County Council |
3rd | Essex County Council | 3rd | Staffordshire County Council |
4th | Buckinghamshire County Council | 4th | Wakefiled Council |
5th | Leicester City Council | 5th | Coventry City Council |
Top 3 Websites for Web Accessibility
A fully accessible website ensures that all visitors are able to use your website and understand the content regardless of age, digital skills, or disabilities. Acquia Optimize scans your site to find any possible issues that may hinder web accessibility, giving you an overview of how your website is doing, as well as recommendations on how to address any issues.
We advise achieving an accessibility compliance score of at least 70% for organizations using the Acquia Optimize platform to demonstrate progress toward compliance. The average accessibility score for the report was 71.90%. See the highest scorers in Accessibility Compliance in 2021 and 2024, below.
Ranking | UK | Accessibility Compliance* | Ranking | UK | Accessibility Compliance* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st | Leicester City Council | 75.21% | 1st | Wakefield Council | 83.44% |
2nd | Cambridgeshire County Council | 74.65% | 2nd | Cumbria County Council | 80.56% |
3rd | Essex County Council | 74.61% | 3rd | BCP Council | 80.11% |
Top 3 Websites for Content Quality Assurance
Acquia Optimize’s Content Quality Assurance module looks for misspellings, broken links, broken images, and readability issues. By working on quality assurance, you can decrease bounce rates, increase conversions, and improve your SEO, helping future and current customers more easily find the information they need. The benchmark average for quality assurance in this report was 77.83%. Listed below are the top three UK Councils that are doing outstanding work to maintain quality assurance standards for their content.
Ranking | UK | QA Compliance* | Ranking | UK | QA Compliance* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st | Derbyshire County Council | 99.60% | 1st | Cumbria County Council | 99.80% |
2nd | Cumbria County Council | 99.40% | 2nd | Worcestershire County Council | 99.40% |
3rd | Manchester City Council | 99.00% | 3rd | Manchester City Council | 99.20% |
Top 3 Websites for SEO
Search engine rankings continue to be heavily influenced by on-page SEO. In addition to negatively affecting your rankings, you can also harm your visitors' experience by neglecting essential elements such as H1 tags, broken links, and excessive internal links. The top three are as follows.
Ranking | UK | SEO Compliance* | Ranking | UK | SEO Compliance* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st | West Sussex County Council | 98.34% | 1st | Derbyshire County Council | 99.38% |
2nd | Derbyshire County Council | 97.91% | 2nd | Surrey County Council | 99.11% |
3rd | Surrey County Council | 97.79% | 3rd | Buckinghamshire County Council | 98.16% |
Top 3 Websites for Response Time
Good site performance is critical for many reasons. User experience for one, but also for SEO as it is a Google ranking metric. With the help of Acquia Optimize's Heartbeat module, you can monitor your website's performance, ensuring a positive user experience and avoiding any potential visitor frustration. The UK Council websites had an average response time of 355 ms in 2024. Your score must be under 200 ms to be considered an excellent performer. Below you can see the top three websites in 2021 and 2024 for average response time.
Ranking | UK | Response Time* | Ranking | UK | Response Time* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st | Leeds City Council | 60 ms | 1st | Wakefield Council | 49 ms |
2nd | Bradford Met. District Council | 71 ms | 2nd | Somerset County Council | 70 ms |
3rd | Devon County Council | 95 ms | 3rd | Devon County Council | 78 ms |
Top 5 Websites for Performance Score
Assessing the overall website performance score (ranging from 0 to 100) using Google LightHouse and Core Web Vitals offers a comprehensive understanding of how factors such as visitor location, network speed, and device impact your site's performance. It provides valuable insights into the overall performance of your website.
Since 2021, we have implemented this parameter into our benchmark reports. The average desktop performance rating for this benchmark report was just 46.55. At Acquia we suggest you aim for a score between 90 and 100.
Below is a list of the top five UK Council websites, based on their desktop performance score in this report.
Ranking | UK | Performance score (0-100) |
|---|---|---|
1st | Kent County Council | 93 |
2nd | Essex County Council | 87 |
3rd | Cumbria County Council | 79 |
4th | East Sussex County Council | 74 |
5th | Enfield Council | 65 |
State of All Councils We Tested in This Report
We looked at council websites in the UK, for 2.5 weeks at the end of February 2024.
If you can’t find your council’s name and are curious about what your website’s score will look like – scan your website here.
Are you on the list, and would you like to receive your in-depth results on all parts of your website?
Let's get in touch and discuss your results.
*Not on the list at all? We work with 1000s of organizations across many different sectors. We’d love the opportunity to scan your website and see how Acquia Optimize could help your organisation. Book a demo with us!
- Barnet London Borough Council
- Birmingham City Council
- Bristol City Council
- Cambridgeshire County Council
- Cheshire West & Chester Council
- Coventry City Council
- Cumbria County Council
- Devon County Council
- Ealing Council
- East Sussex County Council
- BCP Council
- Bradford Met. District Council
- Buckinghamshire County Council
- Cheshire East Council
- Cornwall Council
- Croydon Council
- Derbyshire County Council
- Dorset County Council
- East Riding of Yorkshire Council
- Enfield Council
- Essex County Council
- Hampshire County Council
- Kent County Council
- Lancashire County Council
- Leicestershire County Council
- Liverpool City Council
- Newham London Borough Council
- North Yorkshire County Council
- Nottinghamshire County Council
- Sheffield City Council
- Staffordshire County Council
- Surrey County Council
- Warwickshire County Council
- Wiltshire Council
- Gloucestershire County Council
- Hertfordshire County Council
- Kirklees Council
- Leicester City Council
- Lincolnshire County Council
- Manchester City Council
- Norfolk County Council
- Northamptonshire County Council
- Oxfordshire County Council
- Somerset County Council
- Suffolk County Council
- Wakefield Council
- West Sussex County Council
- Worcestershire County Council
See How Your Website Scored in 2024
See your website's scan results and how your council performed in this report. We can also scan your internal user portal, if you need to review its performance.
How the rankings work
Acquia:
Scanned a sample of 500 pages from the main publicly facing websites of 48 UK councils using Acquia Optimize’s Web Governance software during a two-week period in February 2024.
Ranked the 48 websites based on their scores in Web Accessibility, Content Quality Assurance, SEO, and Response Time.
Calculated the overall champions based on the average (weighted) ranking in all categories, prioritizing web accessibility, then content quality assurance, response time, and SEO and performance.
Get Your Results
Improve Your Accessibility Rankings
Benefits of improving accessibility:
- Increased Audience
By building an accessible website, you open yourself up to a much larger audience as 1/5 of the world’s population is living with a disability that could prevent them from using your site. - Improved SEO
Many web accessibility standards overlap with good SEO practices like ensuring descriptive alt and title attributes, checking for correct HTML, and offering a site map to users. - Enhanced User Experience and Quality Assurance
Accessibility means creating a website which provides a good experience for everyone, so when you ensure a good experience for users with disabilities, you can rest assured that your overall website experience and quality will improve. - Strengthen Brand Image and Reputation
Committing to accessibility is not just good for your users, but shows you take your social responsibility seriously and can benefit your brand. So make sure to promote your accessibility efforts.
