Following a competitive tender process, HMA was commissioned to design, develop and support Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s new website.

The NHS Trust provides specialist mental health and learning disability services to the people of Leeds across the Yorkshire and Humber region.

The brief was clear – to create a site that was friendly and accessible for its primary audience – namely service users, carers and the public. The new site also needed to reflect and showcase the Trust’s values of being caring, demonstrating integrity and, above all, keeping it simple!

Working closely with the communications team within the Trust, HMA took a co-creation approach to the delivery of this project, engaging with service users and staff to understand what their vision for the new website would be. This resulted in an intuitive navigational structure and a clear approach to content development in line with the feedback from the sessions.

Oliver Tipper, Head of Communications at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “HMA were a great agency to work with. Their approach was inclusive but also sensible and pragmatic. They worked with us the whole way through and were really flexible to our needs. They made us feel like we were an important client and were responsive when we needed help or we encountered issues.

“The main thing is that we’ve ended up with a fantastic website that fits the brief and has been well received by our stakeholders. In terms of the content management system, my team are so much happier with it as it’s easy to use and takes a lot less time to post and manage content. This is a site we can at last be proud of.”

The site is responsive to work across all sizes of device and is powered by WordPress, using a bespoke multi-site implementation to enable the communications team to assign editing rights to specific areas of the site.

You can view the new website at www.leedsandyorkpft.nhs.uk