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Help

Our help guide for Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s website

Introduction

Welcome to Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s website. 

We have organised our information so that our services and online transactional facility are more prominent and organised into groups that are now standard across all council web sites in London.

We hope our mini tour guide will help you get the most out of Hammersmith & Fulham’s website!

Viewing our site

Our site has been designed and tested in a variety of browsers. It's been comprehensively tested with Netscape 6 and upwards, Internet Explorer 5 and upwards, Opera 5 and upwards, and Mozilla 1.3 and upwards.

Homepage

The homepage is the gateway to our website. Whilst all our pages have a consistent look and feel, the homepage shows the items you are most likely to be looking on our site for.

Main features include:

  • Language icon - A rotating image of languages spoken within the borough appears on the home page only. Clicking on this will take the user to a page explaining how to get the site translated into their own language and how to contact the council.
  • Do it online box – where the most popular online transactional forms can be accessed e.g. pay your council tax, apply for a parking permit, make a complaint etc.
  • News – the latest news within the borough is featured with a link to the most recent council headlines.
  • Helping you with…- this area assists with a range of changes in your life including; becoming a parent, moving into the borough and crime and grime.
  • Popular links – a list of the most popular pages.
  • Events - a searchable calendar of events in the borough       

User chooser

To provide a personalised experience for our main groups of users, we have created optional links to a resident, visitor and company portal page. 

For example, the company portal will take users directly to pages about starting a business within the borough

Each portal will deliver content appropriate to that area and will be updated regularly.

Page layout

All Hammersmith & Fulham web pages have four main parts:

1. The top header
 
The top of our pages displays a logo banner to inform you of the website that you are using. Within the banner is a search box, powered by Google, which allows you to do a keyword search.

There is also an A to Z of services listing which provides all our services in alphabetical order.

Just above the banner are three links:

  • Help – the area you are using right now
  • Contact us – useful contact numbers, links to maps, cashier opening hours and an online form to help you contact the council 
  • Accessibility – How the council is making our site more usable to all. This  includes tips on how to change the text size and colour of your page.       

The banner contains a link back to the homepage, wherever you are on the site.

To help you identify in which part of the website you are in, we have included a line below the banner of your visited links. If you click on any of these, you will return to a previously viewed page.

2. The left hand menu

This menu is named ‘Council Services’ and acts as a gateway to hundreds of services. The 12 main categories are grouped as follows:

  • Advice and benefits – includes Council tax, legal advice, housing and council tax benefit.
  • Business  – includes trading standards, licensing and business support and advice.
  • Community and Living – includes registering births, deaths and marriage, hiring a council venue, equalities and diversity and voluntary organisations.
  • Council and democracy – includes councillor and MP information, the constitution and making a complaint about the council.
  • Education and learning – includes early years, primary and secondary schools, adult and community education and teaching.
  • Environment and planning – Includes planning applications, pollution, graffiti, fly tipping, rubbish, waste and recycling and recycling.
  • Health and Social care – includes services for children, elderly, disabilities and assessment.
  • Housing - includes applying for council housing and homelessness.
  • Jobs and careers – includes Hammersmith & Fulham vacancies, career advices within the borough and training and development opportunities.
  • Leisure and culture – includes libraries, theatres, sports faculties and entertainment.
  • News and Media – includes the latest and archived press releases, H&F News (the council’s newspaper) and public notices.
  • Transport and streets – includes parking, road safety, highways and the council’s transport policy.

When you click on one of the 12 top-level sections, it moves to the top of the list and the menu opens up to show relevant subsections and pages. The other main sections disappear. When you choose a section from this new list, it's subsections appear and the other subsections disappear. The sections you have clicked on to reach the current page remain visible in the left menu to help you find your way back to previous pages. 

Alternatively, you can use the back button on your browser to return to the page you last visited or click on the Hammersmith & Fulham banner at the top of every page to return to the home page. 

If there are related pages, forms, documents or external links associated with the page you are viewing these will be accessible from the body of the page or from the right hand side of the screen.

3. The content area 

The content area (in the middle of the page) differs from page to page, depending on the subject.

When a service requires a more lengthy explanation, we have provided links to ‘more information’ links, which lead to web pages or downloadable PDF files.

Do it online

When you click on the top-level groupings, you will notice a ‘Do it online’ section in the middle of the page. This area contains online forms related to that service
e.g. Council Tax contains a link to ‘Pay your council tax’ within that box. 

These forms use the council’s interactive software which can be completed on–line  or PDF files, which need to be printed, filled out, signed, and returned to the relevant council office.
To view PDF files, you will need to ensure that you have the correct software installed. See the Adobe website: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

4. The footer
The bottom of each page contains some of the links from the header and further links to:

Help – where you are now.
Freedom of information –provides information to members of the public on how use their rights under the Act to identify and access information.
Privacy – States how, if requested, personal information is used.
Copyright – Use of the website’s content and images.
Disclaimer – What the council is responsible for on the website
Accessibility  –See section one.
Feedback – To make a comment about the website, please use this online form.