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Most council websites are not yet good enough to support the major shift to self-service required to mitigate the impact of coming budget cuts on service levels and satisfaction, according to a new report.

The annual 'Better Connected' survey of 433 local authority websites, conducted by Socitm Insight, calculates that every customer who is dealt with face-to-face costs £8.23 while a phone call costs £3.21 and a web visit just 39p.

But despite the financial incentive to move clients online, Socitm Insight found little evidence that councils invested in their websites last year while visitor satisfaction dropped by 18 per cent and 21 per cent of visitors in December could not find what they were looking for.

More than half of all councils' answerphone messages fail to refer callers to their websites. Report author Martin Greenwood said: 'Given the urgent need for councils to deliver more for less, it is really disappointing that the performance of this lowest cost service delivery channel seems to have stagnated over the last year.'

The survey found that just 39 per cent of council websites provided sufficient information to answer visitors' questions while only 61 per cent could be relied upon to be up-to-date, a statistic that was little changed from the previous month. Almost four out of ten council websites allow visitors to pay bills or fines.

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