Stray Dogs Online?! (Wokingham District Council)

Name: lily7star

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Product:	Wokingham District Council
Date:	21/04/01 (232 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice place to live!

Disadvantages: BIG council tax bills

Dooyoo have done it at last.... and after having nagged cajoled and pleaded with Henrik to put Wokingham on the dooyoo map, I could hardly sit back and refrain from writing in this category now, could I?

I have to admit that Wokingham's site may be harder to be positive about after spending so long exploring and reviewing the excellent Reading Borough Council site yesterday, but this is home, and I might learn something useful, so I figure it's worth the effort!

Wokingham's site is titled "Wokingham District Web" in a vivid serpentine green. It's quite basic graphically, but eyecatching all the same, and if I hadn't seen the Reading site, this would look relatively good after Bracknell. The whole site has a white background with green and brown graphics and lettering. It's definitely nothing to get excited about. I'm now hoping that something interesting but not instantly visible is going to make up for the lack of excitement in the aesthetics here...

The menu to the right of the page contains a list of 29 sections to explore. These are as diverse as "Europe" "Animals" and "Library Catalogues". There is also a list of local headlines covering foot and mouth (inevitably) advice on traveller encampments, and a tenants' gardening competition.

I investigated the traveller information and was intrigued to discover that there are apparently 7 different kinds of traveller, 2 of which are recognised in law as minority ethnic groups. Wokingham, because of its good geographical location in the Thames Valley, apparently attracts travellers, many of whom have family links here going back generations.This means that there are often huge gatherings here for weddings and funerals.

I found this all fascinating as my kids have had traveller kids in their schools and we had quite a bit of contact with one of the families before they moved away. One of the schools is
next to a church and churchyard and opposite a traveller site so we have experienced first hand the incredible funerals they have with lorryloads of flowers, huge gazebos to shelter the people attending the ceremonies by the grave, and a parking problem only controllable by the police and even then making picking our kids up from school next to impossible on the day of a large funeral.

Obviously there is a lot more to Wokingham than its traveller community, but it was an interesting start to my meanderings through the website, and the information given about how to handle unauthorised encampments looked thorough and helpful. I'm not going to even try and cover all the sections of the website, but just go for the more interesting looking bits!

*About the District*

Whoever made this page must like lists....lists of links, lists of engagements for the Council Chairman and lists and lists of interesting and not-so-interesting statistics. I don't think much of the Chairman's welcome which is basically just a page of links, but this is atoned for by the fact that there is prominent place given to the Chairman's Charity - Daisy's Dream which is Wokingham based and supports bereaved children. Wokingham is the first council website I've seen which gives this kind of prominence to a charity.

Wokingham district is a strange kind of area, pretty widely spread, semi-rural and with Wokingham as the central but small town. Although I've lived in this area for many years, I hadn't realised how big the district actually is, taking in areas I've more often thought of as belonging to Reading. Wokingham is thought of as being an affluent community and was singled out a short time ago as being the healthiest place in the country to live. I was amazed, despite all this, that a huge 46.5% of houses in the area are detached and 29.9% are semis. Even more amazed that Wokingham was found in a recent Bristol university st
udy to be the least deprived district in England based on numbers of lone parents (of which I'm one!) unemployed, long-term illness and number of dependents per family.

Council tax is prohibitive and I imagine that there are few councils which charge more and where the residents get less for their money. It is a constant gripe of residents that we are penalised for living in Wokingham and have little to show for the amounts which we are grudgingly parted from. I mentioned in my Bracknell Forest Borough Council opinion that if we lived a few doors either up or down my road, we'd be within the bounds of BFBC and would have far better services while paying lower council tax. Our kids do not get the same subsidised sports opportunities or music lessons and there is little if any advantage to being a Wokingham resident other than that it's a pleasant semi-rural area.

Wokingham Schools are good, and many of them attract children from outside of the council area, especially from Bracknell. The website comes up trumps here and has an excellent general search facility as well as a search to tell you which schools are your catchment schools depending on where you live. It came up with the correct catchment schools for my kids, even though one of them is outside of Wookingham District. My kids schools are linked to (first visit I've made to their website too!)and I've just discovered as a result that I can read those school newsletters and find all the information my kids forget to bring home by looking on this site! The Wokingham Council site also has school prospectuses available to download in pdf format should you need to get hold of one quickly and you're outside of the area.

Employment-wise, Wokingham is part of the area known as the Silicon Valley of the UK and therefore has very little unemployment and many job vacancies still remaining unfilled. Apparently there are fewer than 700 unemployed, a percentage of 1.6. Mos
t people travel outside of Wokingham District to work, with Reading, Bracknell and London being the major commutes. Like nearby Reading and Bracknell, the transport links are excellent making this a good place for companies to locate themselves.

How can you resist the heading "Animals" on a council website? As well as a lot of links to pet-related sites, this is the place to look for your stray pooch. I did like the title "stray dogs online" which conjured up interesting images for me of dogs typing away....but no, this is a photo gallery of dogs which have been found as strays. apparently in this area, stray dogs are not put down except on the advice of a vet, but if not claimed after a period of time, are rehomed. There are some lovely canines on display here, most of whom seem to have been happily re-united with their owners.

From animals to kids, and there is a kids' section here, which even Reading didn't have (I'm getting to like this site more!) this has a fun corner which looks worthy rather than imaginative, but has details of vital things such as local cinemas and their websites. There are details here of youth clubs and playschemes as well as a competition to create a tour of the district in children's artwork for this website. Sounds a bit more colourful and promising!

Amazingly Wokingham also has its library catalogues available online and readers are able to search for books and renew books already borrowed while online. I couldn't resist a little search to see what was available in the specialist psychotherapy category and have earmarked a few books for reading some time soon. I am ashamed to admit that I haven't yet joined the library in Wokingham, but will do so now that I know I can keep on renewing books online without having to find the time to either phone or go into the library!

I initially thought I was not going to be able to see the Social Services part of the we
site, but this turned out to be just because it was so terribly slow to load as it's loaded with hyperlinks. I do think this is a design fault and that this particular page could do with being split into several. It's an enormous section and full of just about everything you might want to know or do which Social Services might help with. I will definitely be coming back here, as although I work for Wokingham Social Services, there is a lot here which I didn't know, and you can even register your interest in becoming a foster carer online! There is also a list of job vacancies both in Community Services and elsewhere....

I think I will be exploring this site some more as it seems to be an extremely useful source of local information. I'm not going to write much more now <reader heaves a sigh of relief here> but just remark that I think I may become a regular visitor. To be honest, I want to get this op posted so I can go back and find out more about housing benefit for my lodger, tax credit for me and the competition for my kids....

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