Tips for using this site

This site aims to make it as easy as possible for you to find the information you need about the Council’s services. Once you are used to the way the navigation works we hope you will feel at home moving around the site. To get you started, here are a few tips.

The categories

The site is divided into seven main categories: About Your Councils, Caring, Enjoying, Learning, Living, Travelling and Working. You will find these along the top of every page. Here’s broadly what you’ll find in each:

About Your Councils: information on the District, County and Parish/Town Councils, Elections, MPs who represent the area and major partnerships like Community Partnerships, Community Safety etc.

Caring: this includes information about our environmental health service, health in general and social services (the latter are mainly County Council services so will be linked to their site).

Enjoying: information about the countryside and coast, tourism, arts and culture, sports and leisure and information for young people (mainly links to the County Council’s site).

Learning: information about all aspects of learning, including schools, adult education, museums and libraries. As most of these services are provided by Dorset County Council you will mainly find links under these categories to the County Council’s website.

Living: information about key services for residents including waste collection and disposal, planning and building in the area, housing, Council Tax and Benefits, the Registrar and Trading Standards as well as some interesting facts and figures.

Travelling: information on roads, public and community transport, parking, abandoned vehicles and other details about being on the move.

Working: information for businesses, including trade waste and Business Rates, and job-seekers.

A-Z and Search

You can access the A-Z by clicking the link at the top of any page. You then need to search for the topic you're interested in and click the link for further information. This will normally take you to another page within our own website or to another organisation's site, for example Dorset County Council. Some entries do not have a link and just give a small amount of information about the topic.

Our search facility is not yet up and running but we hope to bring it to you shortly.

Navigating

Once you have opened up one of the main categories (above) you will see the sub-categories appear in a list down the left-hand side of the page. If you click on one of these the page will appear and any sub-categories it has will be listed..