Surfin' Lewisham

Internet shopping is a big hit with the residents of the Winslade estate in south-east London. They can check out offers in their local shop – Harry's Food – on one of the pages on their community website, and email suggestions of products for it to stock.

They get the service through Lewisham council's CommunityWeb project. They can also surf the internet for free over a wireless network, access the minutes of tenants' meetings, find out about New Cross's neighbourhood wardens service, send and receive emails, exchange views in online discussions and even, with council training, make their own web pages.

The project links two government objectives: promoting social inclusion and the use of IT. It was launched in July with the aim of making it easier for residents to get online and discover the internet's many benefits.

Project manager Daniel Richards says: "There's a youth festival coming up, and we're going to use CommunityWeb to get the kids to develop a site from scratch. The caretaker is going to put a page on – he's never used a computer before."

So far, more than 50 people have registered to use the internet and email service. When its smooth running is assured, the council will extend the service across the whole borough.

Lewisham hired educational software company Computer Literacy to design and support CommunityWeb, and deliberately kept it separate from the council's own website. Trisha Silvester, Computer Literacy's managing director, says: "It's designed so that the community can put the information they want on there. It's easy to use: it's very clear how you get out of pages, so you don't get lost somewhere and find you've shut down your web browser."

A straw poll of 240 residents, undertaken before the project, found that no fewer than 156 tenants had access to a computer at home, but for those who don't, the Cyber Centre – the internet cafe set up on the estate as part of the project – fills the gap.

Novice internet users can get training from Richards every Wednesday afternoon at the venue. The council has also set up a computer room for the elderly residents of its sheltered accommodation property, Lewis Silkin House.

Content filters
Computer Literacy's Silvester stresses that although CommunityWeb is easy to use for both young and old, language filters and regular monitoring stop people posting anything inappropriate. The website is publicly accessible, but to design pages or post messages, users must register, providing personal details.

Email is the most popular reason for people to get involved, Richards says, but he hopes residents will be inspired to go further by the ever-increasing supply of templates and pictures available for them to use in building their own websites. He plans to invest in a digital camera as user numbers grow. Web pages can be designed using a simple layout tool, though it is possible to view and input HTML to make a more detailed site "if you're a bit handy", as Richards puts it.

One of his protégés, 19-year-old Andrew Johnson, has been using the email facility to apply for work as an office junior. Andrew had never used email before CommunityWeb, but with its help has designed his CV, which he is now sending out to prospective employers.

Andrew is one of the residents with access to a computer at home (although he must fight his older brother to use it). They can connect to the internet for free through a network card, installed in their computer by staff at the centre. This connects to a wireless LAN through aerials on the top of four blocks, which transmit data to the Cyber Centre's email and web servers.

The set-up has a super-fast 2 Mb broadband connection that can handle four times as much data as a standard domestic broadband connection. This costs the council £9000 a year. So far, the demand has easily been met by the servers and each user's capacity is unrestricted, though Richards will monitor the situation as more residents get involved. Eventually charges will be fed back into the project.

Community Literacy can offer its package to other councils and registered social landlords, which can customise it for their own communities. A number of organisations have already been to see the site in action, including London councils Lambeth and Greenwich, Broomleigh Housing Association and Poplar Harca.

On the Winslade Estate, one idea is eventually to turn the Cyber Centre into a community business for the residents to run themselves on a shift basis. It's a world away from the stereotype of a community centre, with a terrace, outdoor seating, and a cappuccino machine that could potentially be rented out to residents' groups.

Whether or not the internet shopping system will expand to include home deliveries, though, is quite another thing: Harry's Food has a staff of just two, Nitin and Dipen Patel, and they're not quite ready to handle the kind of service their customers would need. They're big fans of the CommunityWeb, though, and a printout of their own web page is taped on the wall behind the shop's counter. The scheme is helping to renew the estate's sense of community, they say: "It's good for the customers and it's good for us."