New UKBA website launched but is it `improved`?

Re-launched on 4 September 2011, the UKBA`S website has brought together all the agencies online content. The integration covers the Visa Services website and most of the 200 country websites which have been hosted by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and commercial partners overseas. Remaining country websites are due to be brought into this website by the end of September.

In its press release the UKBA reports that it has tested "the new integrated website with applicants both overseas and in the UK, and with sponsors" and that it is "[t]he findings [which] have informed our new homepage and navigational structure". Consultation appears to have omitted practitioners who regularly refer to the website and would undoubtly have been harsher critics of the changes. While the website is ‘new`, whether it is ‘improved` remains to be seen as the UKBA site has not been known in the past for its user friendliness or ease of navigation to relevant material buried within link after link.