couldn't disagree more. Underneath the "frosting" of the design surface of this site is one of the best user experiences I've had on a government website in a long long time. As someone who is in the middle of building out a large government site at the moment I'm keenly aware of how hard it must have been to bring the Manchester council team along with their design and ux decisions. For me this is the real triumph of this site.
I agree. It is easy to complain about how boostrappy or wordpress like the theme is, but it is immaterial the source of the design inspiration. The most import thing is, that it works and is functional. Try going to the birmingham.gov.uk or london.gov.uk or any of the boroughs in London and see how much of an improvement this approach actually is.
I just started as a BA at Westminster, currently working on customer journeys and user stories, redesigned website and content to follow early next year....watch this space...!
Well done folks.