Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the (a) accessibility and (b)) ease of access of online consultations held by his Department.

Consultations at MHCLG are published on GOV.UK using the ‘consultations’ content type. This page type has been designed by Government Digital Service (GDS) to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 standards.

Teams are supported to follow GDS guidelines for creating accessible web documents when creating consultations. Wherever possible, MHCLG publish consultation documents in HTML format to maximise accessibility.

Respondents can comment on a consultation via an online survey that is hosted on MHCLG’s consultation platform, Citizen Space. The Citizen Space platform has been developed to meet WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards and is commonly used by central and local government to conduct accessible consultation processes.

Most consultations at MHCLG also give users the opportunity to make enquiries and to respond to the consultation via email and/or by post.