Content strategy 2025 to 2028

Last updated: 26 March 2026

About this strategy

Content strategy can be described as planning for the creation, delivery and governance of useful content.

Content is material created for digital or print platforms with the purpose of informing, engaging or influencing an audience. It is a fundamental part of every service we provide whether it’s on our website or in a form, chatbot, policy or letter.

The purpose of this strategy is to provide a clear direction for how we will handle content at Medway Council.

It directly feeds into our digital, data and technology (DDaT) strategy which aims to achieve the following vision: “Medway residents and visitors will find it easy to interact with us, access services and get the information they need.”

This strategy has been produced by the Content Design Team. It is one part of continuing to develop the organisation and our services to provide the best possible experiences for our users.

Why we need a content strategy

Content describes the council’s services, policies, and procedures and makes them accessible to our users. We know that:

The average reading age of the UK population is 9 years old. The Sun has a reading age of 8 and The Guardian a reading age of 14.

In England, 7.1 million people can be described as having ‘very poor literacy skills’. They can understand short straightforward text on familiar topics, but reading information from unfamiliar sources, or on unfamiliar topics, can cause problems.

At least 2 in 5 people in the UK have a long-term illness, impairment, or disability. They need information to be provided in an accessible way and sometimes require extra assistance when interacting with us.

As a local authority we have a duty to be inclusive. We must comply with laws such as the Equality Act, and accessibility regulations, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Our aim

Our aim is to support the creation of clear, useful, usable content that:

aids successful user journeys and outcomes
is usable by the widest possible audience.

This strategy will help us manage our digital content over the long term, so we can make consistent decisions about how we create and present information.

It will help us to ensure our content is:

purposeful
designed for the user
high quality
replicable
accessible
inclusive
created and managed efficiently.

When our content is all these things, it:

meets user’s needs
contributes to our organisational goals.

Our objectives

To achieve this aim, we have developed a set of objectives.

Our overarching objectives can be broken down into 5 groups with specific actions for how they’ll be achieved:

Redefining how the organisation thinks about content
Supporting services to design good content
Collaborating to design whole user journeys
Website rationalisation
Redeveloping medway.gov.uk.

Redefining how the organisation thinks about content: Content is data

Every piece of written content is data.

People often think of data as numbers or statistics, but customers rely on the accuracy of our written words whether they’re visiting our website, on social media or reading an email we’ve sent them. Content is a source of truth that residents use to make informed decisions.

For example, we publish data like opening hours and contact details that need to be easily found as well as service information and policies residents need for understanding their responsibilities, rights and actions.

In the next few years, good, structured content will become the foundation for people who are using artificial intelligence (AI) to find and consume our information and services. Customers with questions are expecting succinct and accurate answers, but the results given by AI, such as chat bots, are only as good as the content that sits behind it. Fragmented or poor-quality content hampers the ability for AI to analyse and draw meaningful insights. In some cases, complex language with a high reading age, jargon and abbreviations can make content harder for AI to understand. The risk is that customers using AI won’t get an answer, or even worse they’ll get an answer that is out-dated or inaccurate.

That’s why we need to think about content as data - as a reusable asset that describes something about our organisation. Words that are accurate, understandable, accessible, reusable across various channels and make sense if drawn out of context from other content. This enables users to do something with our content; to understand it, act on it, share it and more. That action then feeds into our data about user behaviour, further informing the content we need and how it should be shared with users.

By viewing our written content as data, we can better organise it and use it to improve our services.

We aim to redefine content as data by:

communicating the concept through conversations with teams we’re working with and channels like the corporate newsletter
sharing stories of content design work and the outcomes with the organisation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is rapidly reshaping how people discover and interact with information, and our content design team is evolving accordingly. Users are no longer only navigating directly to websites. They’re increasingly relying on AI tools, AI‑powered search engines and summarisation features that extract answers without traditional page visits.

This shift means having structured, clear and machine readable content is more important than ever to allow AI systems to interpret it accurately and present it in a way that still reflects our intent.

To respond to this change, we are:

actively researching how different AI platforms (such as Chat GPT and Google Gemini) consume and surface our content on medway.gov.uk
analysing changes in traffic sources to the website
undertaking AI training
improving the way our website supports these new behaviours including auditing webpage metadata
implementing an AI-driven search (Agent Ex) to help users get fast and accurate answers in a way that aligns with evolving expectations.

By combining behavioural insight and technical optimisation, we’re positioning our content for a future where human and AI interactions work side by side.

Supporting services to design good content

We aim to use our content design expertise to enhance knowledge of good content design around the organisation. We want to help colleagues understand why content should be written in plain English and following our style guide and accessibility standards.

We will do this by:

regularly sharing our content standards with colleagues
producing a content handbook that explains what content designers do and why
providing learning sessions to teams on what makes good content, so they can incorporate it into written correspondence, reports, policies etc.
creating mandatory content design training, such as a video or e-learning, that must be completed by all employees and new starters
setting up an internal content community of practice where colleagues can ask questions and seek advice
continuing to have structured governance for medway.gov.uk with content designers creating, editing and overseeing all content published on the website.

We will measure success by:

positive feedback from colleagues
evidence of plain English within internal documents
evidence of more accessible documents being shared internally
an improved accessibility score for medway.gov.uk which we measure using an accessibility checker called Silktide.

Collaborating to design whole user journeys

As well as working directly with teams, we’ll work with other specialists, such as service designers and product designers, to ensure content is well designed when creating new services or redesigning existing services.

Collaboration is one of Medway Council’s values. Our aim is to break down silos, to help teams work together when they provide similar services and to reuse processes and patterns where they are proven to work.

As design specialists, users are at the heart of what we do (users can be the public, other organisations, visitors to Medway or council staff). By bringing specialised skills together, we can create seamless journeys for users so they can achieve outcomes with no dead ends.

These user journeys do not always start and finish online. Information in channels such as flyers, posters, letters and telephony is available alongside digital services. We may also require users to move from one system to another when transacting with us. It’s therefore important we have consistent quality of content within different channels and systems to maintain a recognisable and trustworthy identity.

A user’s journey with us may involve multiple steps, channels and emotions, with content playing a vital role.

For example, as content designers we can:

help users find what they’re looking for through structured and search engine optimised content
work with service designers to ensure a customer has all the information they need before completing a transaction
make sure content throughout a transaction, such as within a chat bot, account, form, emails, letters or text messages is as clear and helpful as possible
use content to set expectations about what happens when a transaction is completed
work with the Communications Team and CABS to advertise the information
help the service to ensure any associated documents are accessible and written in plain English.

To help us improve user journeys, we will:

continue to avoid duplication of content on medway.gov.uk by bringing content together in one place based on subject and not how council departments are structured
identify more opportunities to create step-by-step content for services (like our step-by-step page for registering a birth)
identify opportunities to create content for whole journeys (such as moving home or having a baby)
be involved from the start when designing new services or redesigning existing services, particularly those on the Medway 2.0 roadmap
work with colleagues to design micro copy within third-party accounts and systems
work with the Communications Team to ensure a consistent user experience between our websites, social media and marketing materials.

Website rationalisation

Over the years the council has accumulated several websites, some of which have the same audience and purpose. It’s our long-term ambition to rationalise our websites to:

make it easier for users to find what they need
mitigate the risk of inaccurate content if there’s different versions in different places
reduce the cost of maintaining several websites such as hosting, domain names etc
reduce the cost of using external suppliers and our reliance on them to provide simple content and sufficient accessibility compliance
make it easier for content designers to govern and manage digital content for the organisation.

This does not mean all content is suitable for medway.gov.uk or that there isn’t a place for bespoke websites, however, reducing our number could help the organisation become more efficient. This links in with the organisation’s objective of having ‘a single view of the council for customers’.

Bespoke websites

In some cases, it’s appropriate to have a bespoke website that is separate from medway.gov.uk, for example to support:

commercial activity
income generation
promoting a particular venue
an identity that needs to be separated from the Medway Council brand.

For example, we already have separate websites for:

Medway Adult Education
Rochester Corn Exchange
Medway Tickets Live (theatres)
Medway Safeguarding Children’s Partnership.

These websites give greater flexibility in their design compared to if their content was placed within the medway.gov.uk website with its distinct proposition and design system.

However, the number of these websites should be kept to a minimum. Users can become overwhelmed and confused when there are several different places to find information.

A request for a bespoke website will only be considered if there is a strong business case to have one. A business case must outline the audience and user needs.

We will:

decide on one content management system for bespoke websites that meets digital requirements and can be managed effectively
analyse business cases against user need and alongside our existing websites
work with our design colleagues to create good user experiences whilst adhering to best practices such as plain English and accessibility requirements
make sure each website has its own proposition.

Our aim is to be involved early in conversations about new websites, apps and any online presence to advise on the best approach. The Information Senior Management Team will review all proposals and explore options. For example, we may decide that new or enhanced pages on an existing website is more appropriate than creating a new website. We can also use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to present a customer’s information from various systems in a single place.

Redeveloping medway.gov.uk

Our corporate website receives over 1.5 million views every month and is the front door to many of the council’s services. As a local authority, residents need to interact with us. They do not have a choice to go elsewhere, which is why it’s important we make it easy for them.

Being able to shop, bank and complete a multitude of tasks online means residents want to, and expect to, interact with us digitally. The website has the benefit of being available any day and time, therefore more people are using it to get information and apply for, pay for, or report something.

However, information on medway.gov.uk can be difficult for users to find. There are over 14,000 webpages and all democracy related documents are indexed within the search engine.

There are also areas with out-of-date content or content that is lacking in the detail users need.

Our aim is to refocus the website’s purpose and improve user experience.

Refocussing the website’s purpose

To clearly define the purpose of medway.gov.uk, we have developed a content proposition which explains what will and will not be published to the website. This is to help ensure the website focuses on transparency and public information.

We will continue with our existing governance structure where content designers create, edit and oversee all information published to the website. This is to help:

maintain consistent content
manage the use and reuse of content
assess accessibility compliance.

Improve user experience

To improve user experience, we have broken our objectives into 3 groups with actions for how they’ll be achieved:

Accurate and up to date content
Usable and accessible content
Content patterns.

Accurate and up to date content

Users want content that they can rely on.

Often content published on websites or intranets is forgotten about. It isn’t reviewed and updated regularly enough. This means users can find themselves trawling through information to find what they need.

As content designers, we are reliant on subject matter experts to look after the factual accuracy of their information and tell us when anything changes. Some colleagues are good at this and in some areas we have out of date information online.

We have run a ‘scrape’ of the website to provide the date in which each page was last updated.

We are contacting services to update our list of information owners.

We will work with services to produce plans with content review dates, ensuring regular updates are made.

Usable and accessible content

As Content Designers it’s our job to make sure content on medway.gov.uk is usable and accessible.

Whilst we oversee content every day, we’re taking a step back to view the website holistically, to better understand the individual parts and how they work together. We are conducting an audit of pages, documents, metadata and information architecture (the categories that form the navigation of our website) to make gradual improvements that will lead to a much better user experience.

We have:

removed the indexing of democracy documents and pages from our search engine to help users find what they’re looking for
reviewed the tools we use to track user behaviour, check accessibility and maintain the website to ensure we have the best tools for our needs
conducted an information architecture (IA) exercise with 108 participants to identify improvements to the way content is structured (categories and navigation). Our IA has not been updated since 2018 and changes will help users find what they're looking for more easily.

We are:

reviewing the way we manage our content management system (CMS) making sure we keep it organised and efficient. For example, we have removed redundant categories and test pages. Next, we are auditing templates that are no longer needed.

When a CMS is structured well, the website also becomes clearer, faster and easier to navigate. It supports better search results, cleaner information architecture and more reliable performance. It also helps AI to interpret our content correctly.

We will:

reduce webpages by removing duplicated and out-of-date information
reduce webpages by grouping information where relevant, for example bringing information on financial help into one place
reduce documents in favour of accessible HTML webpages and online forms
make changes to our information architecture to help users navigate successfully
review and update our SEO on a regular basis to enhance search performance based on user data
implement an AI-powered search to help users find information more quickly and easily
identify areas where we can reduce digital carbon and make our website more sustainable to support the council's climate change agenda
work with our product designer to create a design system, which will have a simpler, cleaner and accessible style, follow best practice (for example GDS) and create consistency across the website.

We will also complete at least two content reviews of a particular service each year in collaboration with the subject matter expert(s) to:

improve existing content by explaining complex concepts in a simple way
reorder and consolidate content
reduce or remove content that is no longer needed
add content based on search terms that are not yielding results
add content based on calls to support the call centre in reducing avoidable contact
add content based on previous freedom of information requests and complaints, to ensure information is available online within the context of a service or task
explore different ways of presenting content that works well on all devices
measure success by revisiting data, such as analytics, user behaviour and feedback after changes have been made.

We will prioritise these reviews based on:

the projects within the Medway 2.0 roadmap
when the content was last audited
the reach – the number of people using the service
if we’re receiving a high volume of calls, repeated feedback or complaints.

Content patterns

Content patterns can be described as reusing common elements across different pieces of content. This can include how content is presented and the type of information it contains.

Using patterns within a website can help users:

to orientate where they are because of consistent and predictable content structures
find the information they need because structured content enhances search engine optimisation (SEO)
engage with and trust us because we provide familiar content structures that are easy to follow.

We already use some content patterns such as:

the F reading pattern
the inverted pyramid
how we write task-based content which includes what the user needs before they start and what happens after.

Our aim is to develop more content patterns that can be adopted across the website where appropriate. For example, how we write and present content for:

contacting us
users reporting a problem
Consultations
campaigns
life events (such as moving home).

This could help with our vision of making medway.gov.uk the preferred option for information and access to services.

It will also help with optimising our content for artificial intelligence (AI) because simple, structured content is easier for AI to:

find, analyse and interpret
match with user queries
filter out inconsistent information
reuse across a variety of platforms.

Benefits of this content strategy

This content strategy will help us to:

have a clear purpose for all content
design content that is simple, clear, focused and accessible
reuse content patterns that work well for users to build consistency and increase satisfaction
align content with our objectives
properly manage content through review and retention
identify areas for improvement
build a reputation amongst our peers for high quality content.