Absolutely Dotty! Government Blows Over Half a Million on Website Revamp That Involved Moving a Full Stop
Ministers spent more than £500,000 of taxpayers‘ money on a ‘vanity’ makeover for the government website which critics say is little more than changing a colour and moving a dot. The Mail has more.
The gov.uk site, used by millions for essential services such as tax returns and passport renewals, will see its traditional black masthead turned blue and its ‘dot’ coloured turquoise.
The tweaks were commissioned as part of “brand refresh” with contracts totalling £532,000 handed to global ad agency M&C Saatchi.
The costly new logo, set to go live this month, has already met with ridicule from civil servants, with one mocking online: “Did someone really get paid to move a dot?”
Others labelled it “cheap”, “tacky” and “absolutely diabolical”.
Zia Yusuf, head of Reform UK’s efficiency drive, last night branded the revamp a waste of public money.
He said: “The disrespect for taxpayers’ money continues to be astounding.
“Spending more than £500,000 on changing a logo on a government website is a joke at the taxpayer’s expense, quite literally.
“This is just the kind of thing we have been uncovering in county halls on a daily basis. It’s abundantly clear that Whitehall also needs a visit from Reform’s DOGE team.”
Two contracts for the brand refresh were tendered by the previous Conservative government and carried on under Labour, according to publicly available papers.
Communications giant M&C Saatchi secured deals potentially worth up to £750,000.
A government source said the final bill came to £532,000, which the cost drawn from existing department budgets.
The new logo was criticised on web forums used by civil servants.
One said: “As a government we are trying to maximise efficiency and save money.
“Why was this what we chose to spend time and resources on?”
Another joked: “Reform blue for the dot. Conservative blue for the background. Are they preparing us for 2029?”
Worth reading in full.
Perhaps Charlotte Gill can investigate?
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At least one person needs firing for this, probably dozens.
Will it happen? Given that nobody in the public sector is ever held to account, what do you think?
Until this happens, government/local government services will just get worse and worse.
500k isn’t for the artwork.
Most of that is what it costs to run a simple logo refresh through the grinder of committees and working groups and approvals so by the end of it no one knows who decided what and no one can be held responsible for anything.
That’s what is so expensive.
Hmm… I suppose what I want to know is how much did M&C Saatchi get paid? That is to say: ‘how much money out of the door?’. As a separate exercise, how much (time) money was spent by imbeciles within the state apparatus who were being paid anyway to decide between the various options. I’d also like to know how much it will cost us for the IT folk to swap the new logo into place on all the web pages.
Effing lunacy.
Classic example of Milton Friedman’s “only 4 ways to spend money” in action.
Not at all duckie. There was an expenditure of over twenty million under the Labour government in the early 2000s when they changed the name of the Job Centre to Jobcentre Plus. This is how corruption works, banal acts of mass thefts that most people see as too trivial to be concerned about. There are advantages to having a low IQ population but there can be drawbacks as well.
Don’t just blame the Labour Party. Remember what happened to the various departments that were sold off, like the old GPO. Some items that were developed by competent designers have survived, though. E.g the old British Rail logo, the font used for modern road signs, or the Harry Beck maps used by the London Underground etc.
I would have done for half the price.
Looks like a blob site. However, IF they are clever, they might be able to copyright that; not sure.
It must be bad if even the snivelling servants are ridiculing it.
When will they stop pretending they are company execs? they are not, they are public servants, and the only money that they have is what they take from us, and for which they give precious little in return.
Is there a keyoard shortcut to make a dot half way up? Or can I still reach their website with a normal full-stop?
I remember the BBC “redesigning” its logo some years ago. It was done so successfully that nobody noticed.