UK Gov spends half a mil on a logo “refresh” prompting widespread ridicule and questions about taxpayer value.

By Our Political Correspondent: Polly Ticks

The UK government has found itself the butt of national mockery after it was revealed that a GOV.UK “rebrand” costing £532,000 involved little more than changing the colour of a dot.

Civil servants proudly unveiled the revamped logo earlier this month, boasting that the website had “moved confidently into a new era of modern design.” The redesign replaces the familiar black-and-white branding with a bold new blue scheme and a turquoise dot—or, as some have called it, “a £532,000 full stop.”

A costly refresh

The costly update was the work of global advertising giant M&C Saatchi, whose brief reportedly described the turquoise dot as “a visual metaphor for optimism, renewal, and the piggybank of national progress.” According to an internal dossier, the dot could even be “animated to resemble a coin being dropped into a savings jar”—a feature that many have noted would be ironic given the government’s apparent spending habits.

A dotty decision

Social media reacted with predictable derision. One user wrote, “Half a million quid for a dot? I’d have done it for a Freddo and a sandwich.” Others questioned whether the design team simply “sat around moving punctuation marks on PowerPoint until the money ran out.”

Zia Yusuf, head of Reform UK’s efficiency campaign, blasted the move as “an insult to taxpayers,” saying: “This is what happens when Whitehall’s idea of value for money is a turquoise dot that costs more than a starter home in Burnley.”

Downing Street, however, defended the expenditure, insisting the new logo “reflects the government’s commitment to modernity, accessibility, and dotty decisions.”

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