UK Government's E-Petition Website Crashes on First Day

The government's new e-petitions website crashed as people tried to sign a range of petitions including ones calling for the return of capital punishment, and the very popular withdrawal from the EU.

The Directgov website went live with a list of e-petitions on Thursday morning, but repeatedly crashed through sheer weight of numbers as it opened for business with the first tranche of e-petitions.

There were more than 1,000 unique visits a minute, the equivalent of 1.5m visits a day. Government sources said this was far more than the old No 10 e-petitions site had received under Labour and shows that people have more to complain about under the current economic circumstances.

Quite a number of petitions were rejected for failing to meet the terms and conditions.

guardian.co.uk