Homepage, news stories and press releases

Guidance on how we format the PHE homepage, and develop news stories and press releases.

The PHE Homepage

The PHE homepage presents a selection of the latest news and updates to users, in a simple to navigate format.

The homepage contains:

A featured news story appears at the top of the homepage, we add this to the page manually.

News stories and press releases appear below the featured news story, and show up automatically.

Documents are located at the bottom of the page and are ordered by type.

Common types of story we publish

If you have content you would like to publish on GOV.UK, it will usually take the format of a news story or a press release.

It is also possible to publish content as a blog, but we need to be careful not to duplicate content on GOV.UK.

News stories

News stories should provide users with information they can act on, that they would expect to get directly from PHE England.

When developing a news story, please include:

• a clear title (up to 65 characters including spaces)
• summary (up to 140 characters including spaces)
• body copy of the article
• required publication date - or the embargo time and date

News stories can be updated regularly with new information if required.

Press releases

A press release should be an online version of a press communication sent out to the media.

Press releases can include:

• notes at the end, under the heading 'Background' (rather than 'Notes to editors')
• contact details for the press office

Press releases are not updated once they have been uploaded to the system.

Collections

Use a document collection for grouping related documents on a single page:

• for a specific audience
• around a specific theme

A collection could be used to publish:

• a set of forms
• publications in the same series

Do not use a document collection:

• for documents the user would not need (or expect) to find together

More information about document collections

How to cover specific types of stories

Stories about multiple government departments

• these stories should be published in one place and tagged with all relevant parties
• it is important not to duplicate content on GOV.UK

Developing situations

• developing situations should be covered with a 'rolling news story' format
• this includes story such as outbreaks or weather alerts
• news stories should be updated regularly

Guidance and advice

• guidance content should be developed as 'permanent' guidance, that sits on the GOV.UK or NHS Choices homepage
• you should not use the news story format for this type of content
• news stories should be self-contained content, which means they can be deleted from the website without it affecting anything else

Videos and podcasts

Videos and podcasts require permission from the Communications team.

When the Comms team has been briefed, they will liaise with the social media team, the relevant press officer and the in-house multimedia team.

Content we do not publish on GOV.UK

We do not use GOV.UK to publish:

• information for PHE staff – this should be hosted on the intranet
• information for very small groups of people and for collaboration
• general life advice
• commerce shopping baskets
• embedding interactive content
• information about projects or groups that are less than 50% owned by the UK government