Oldham CouncilWorking for a co-operative borough

Oldham Council has quietly published a single web page that pulls together every winter service a household might need, from gritting routes to emergency heating grants. The move matters because last year's cold snap closed six primary schools and left 1,700 homes without heating for more than 24 hours, according to council logs.

The page links residents straight to school-closure alerts, a live gritting map and a £150 Warm Home payment that can be claimed without a paper form. Housing teams have added a one-click button to report damp or dangerous conditions, a response to the 312 private-rental complaints received during December alone.

Bin crews will still publish collection changes on the same site, but the council has dropped the old PDF calendars. Instead, residents type in a postcode and see the next three pick-up dates, plus a red flag if their street was missed the previous week. Repair slots for lost or broken bins are now booked in real time, cutting the average wait from 14 days to five.

There is no new money behind the overhaul; officers simply merged 19 separate pages that few people visited. Early analytics show 4,200 unique users in the first 48 hours, triple the traffic the old winter pages managed in the same period last January.

What the site cannot yet answer is how many households will still fall through the cracks. The homelessness team took 67 calls last Monday, and winter night-shelter beds are already at 92 % capacity. Officers admit the next test is whether better sign-posting actually reaches the people who do not, or cannot, go online.