The launch of the new site means the General Social Care Council has for the first time a stand-alone site rather than a section of the website of the Department of Health, the GSCC's sponsoring department.

The General Social Care Council came into being on 1 October 2001. It was set up in England under the Care Standards Act 2000 to establish codes of practice for social care workers and employers, to set up a register of social care workers and to regulate social work education and training. Similar bodies exist in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The web will ultimately be an important tool for enabling 1.2million social care workers to register with the General Social Care Council. It will also be used to make the Social Care Register public.

The site, built by SAS Ltd in full accordance with Government guidelines on disability access to websites, is the first phase in developing the General Social Care Council's web communications. It has been designed as an interim site while users' requirements are researched. The organisation is keen to hear users' views on the site – its accessibility, ease of navigation, and how the content could be developed.

Chief Executive Lynne Berry said: "We're taking a planned approach to developing our web-based communications and this new website is an important first step. In the next few months we want to do a lot more research with our stakeholders to find out what they want from us in terms of web communications and information.

"This site enables people to find out about the whole spectrum of the General Social Care Council's work and give us feedback about how they think we're doing.

"Further phases will give us a much more interactive site and will be developed along the lines our customers tell us they want it to be. The web will eventually be a very important part of our communications and we aim to integrate it securely with the Social Care Register balancing the need for the register to be public with appropriate security for people on the register."