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The New Web Estate (NWE) project is a major digital overhaul that is completely transforming the University’s online presence. It is a key part of the Sussex 2035 Strategy. 

Much has already been achieved to deliver the project. This includes a new centralised governance system, a ‘reskinned’ website that visually reflects our new brand identity and a major content auditing exercise. The Digital team has also delivered rebranded and updated course pages, a new design for the Sussex homepage and new top-level navigation and drop-down global navigation. 

Building on this progress, the University Executive Board (UEB) has approved an updated approach for the next stages of the project.

What is the plan? 

The updated plan will mean our new web platform will continue to be designed and delivered in partnership with our existing supplier, but some elements of the project will now be led and delivered ‘in-house’ by the Digital project team. 

This will make sure we can deliver with our existing budget and resources, help to strengthen and upskill the Digital team, reduce our reliance on third-party suppliers, and give us more control over the project. 

The project timeline has been updated and the new web platform is expected to be ready for launch by October 2027. 

While the Staff Hub functionality will continue to be developed, a decision has been made to pause further migration of staff-facing content - like the IT, HR or Finance pages, and staff-facing pages in Faculties - onto the new content management system (CMS) for now. 

This will allow the Digital team and our supplier to prioritise the external-facing website and give them time to properly consider the best way to host, present and edit this important content going forward. 

Content Audit 

The Digital team is continuing to audit externally facing web content. However, the audit will pause after the conclusion of the current activity, which covers current student content and information relating to the four faculties.

This will allow the team to focus on updating and making changes already identified by the content audit in preparation for a transition to our new web platform. Once this work is complete, auditing of research groups and centres will begin, continuing throughout the rest of 2026. 

Colleagues who have not yet heard from the Digital team about content auditing will be contacted directly. 

Find out more  

You can learn more about the New Web Estate project by visiting our webpage.