Flagship government website fails

In an inauspicious start to Tony Blair's new term in office, citizens trying to access the government's flagship website, UK Online, have been left high and dry.

One of the two servers hosting the portal, which provides lifestyle advice, news and information to the general public, ground to a standstill earlier this week.

Users trying to access http://www.ukonline.gov.uk should have been re-routed to the functioning server but instead received the error message: The page you requested is not valid.

The site was developed in collaboration with Syntegra, and is hosted by Syntegra's parent company BT.

According to a spokeswoman for the e-envoy's office the fault was corrected as quickly as possible.

Launching ukonline.gov.uk in December, the e-envoy, Andrew Pinder, said: "This is the beginning of a very long march, in some ways one of the biggest consultation exercises in government history. This is very much the start of the conversation."

The government is developing the portal as what it terms 'a one-stop-shop' for all government information and services "24 hours a day, seven days a week".

BT refused to comment on the problems.