Users of Business Link - the government-funded business advice and guidance website - have slammed its recent closure and claim its costly, tax-payer funded replacement is riddled with inaccurate and misleading advice and should be taken offline.
The site, which was launched in 2004, and was revealed in 2010 to have cost the public purse £35m a year to build and operate, was run by private outfit Serco, and was replaced along with Directgov by the new gov.uk website on 17 October 2012.
Elaine Clark, founder of the cheapaccounting.co.uk business, is furious with the changes: 'We have lost a lot of good content which has been replaced by utter rubbish.
'The fact that they have spent £18.7m on this to date means they must call an immediate halt to the project and assess whether they are going in the right direction or not. It was a great resource but by trying to merge content they have thrown the baby out with the bath water.'
She said the new site looked like it had 'been produced by an amateur'.
'It's disgusting that they think this is acceptable for small businesses and intelligent people. Someone must take ownership of the budget on this.
Emer Coleman, deputy director for digital engagement with the Government Digital Service responded to the complaints posted on the forum by saying that estimated annual saving of gov.uk over Directgov and Business Link is £36m.
'To this you need to add the cost of converging departmental websites onto gov.uk which, over time, will realise savings from departmental costs of between £50 - £70m. This can be set against the cost of launching gov.uk which was £18.7m.'
She said all comments about inaccuracies would be reviewed by 'experts in HMRC and Companies House' before being updated.
A cabinet office spokesperson said: 'GOV.UK is a simpler, clearer and faster way for users to find government services and information online.
'Early results bear this out, with the average task success for users of gov.uk at 61% compared with 46% on Business Link; and the average time taken to complete a task one minute quicker on GOV.UK than Business Link. But we are not where we want to be yet, and we welcome all feedback from users. The build of gov.uk has been guided by users' needs at every step of the way, and we will keep testing and improving it to ensure it delivers what users actually want from and need to get done with government.
'We have analysed the way individuals and businesses use Directgov and Business Link, the terms they were searching for, as well as how users expect services to look, feel and behave online. We also looked very carefully at the information found on Directgov and Business Link, and chose not to reproduce some of it on gov.uk. We have done this in cases where the information doesn't help users, or when it is better provided by other organisations. If a user cannot find what they need, however, we will monitor 'failed searches' and will be able to respond quickly. We want to make sure that users' needs are met, even if that requires the creation of new content on the website.