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Local Offer put to the test


Published Friday 27 May 2022

You may or may not know that by law, every local authority must have its own Local Offer website, and that it must contain certain information within it.

There’s lots that we have to make sure we have covered, and one way we hold ourselves to account, is by teaming up with another council and asking them to review our website with fresh eyes.

This month we asked Hillingdon Borough Council to put our Hertfordshire Local Offer website to the test, and we did the same for them in return.

We had some really strong areas of feedback from Hillingdon – for example, they could see the input that parents and young people have had across the website, specially where we provide testimonials and directs advice that families have shared.

The part we were most interested in course, was how we could improve. As a result of our meeting, we now have some clear practical suggestions for development. These include : These include :

  • Improving the links to the school's SEN information reports (some of which are currently broken)
  • Making the links to our health services more obvious and easier to find
  • Providing more information about out-of-county provision, especially schools on the bordering counties
  • Improving our information about assessing and identifying SEN
  • Improving our online content about social care, and making this clearer and easier for families to find

 We're grateful to Hillingdon's Local Offer team, who were very generous with their time, and provided us with friendly and constructive feedback.  We're also very grateful to our parent rep for their time in helping us undertake what proved to be a very worthwhile exercise.

If you have any feedback about the Local Offer website, and how it might be improved, we'd love to hear from you!  Please email us at localoffer@hertfordshire.gov.uk or click on the 'feedback' button at the top of this page. 

You can also get involved by joining our SEND Online Feedback group.  

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