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Westminster City Council relaunched their public website today only to see it flounder within the first few hours.

Members of the public trying to pay things like their council tax and parking fines were met with the following message:

The new website was supposed to make thing easier and quicker. When we tried the website today it was available again, however it was so slow as to be unusuable. It would be impossible to pay something like a parking fine as the site simply timed out.

The new website has apparently been developed by staff from the ICT and Communication departments.

2.7 million people use the site every year so you would think that they would have done some demand testing first to ensure the site could cope with demand. Apparently the site also works with mobile phones - something we've sadly been unable to try.

Our picture (left) shows Merlin Sinclair, (Communications Manager), Cllr Colin Barrow (Leader of the Council), David Wilde (Chief Information Officer) and Angela Powers (Web Master) promotong the new site.

WCC said "Today is the launch of the new Westminster City Council website, which will allow  customers to find the information they need easily and quickly, making sure we provide better customer service first time."

We say that the new web master Angela Powers obviously has a lot of work to do yet.