[December 2024] Revisit support for v4

[vanitabarrett]

What

Revisit our support levels for v4 and decide if we want to continue or reduce the level of support. We said we would revisit this 1 year after dropping IE8-10 and reducing IE11 support. We probably want to take a look at stats and analytics to judge whether it'd be possible for us to completely stop supporting v4.

Why

When we reduced IE11 support in GOV.UK Frontend from compliant to functional and completely dropped IE8-10 support, we said:

We’ll continue to provide minimal support for v4 for the next 12 months by publishing urgent security updates and major bug fixes. We will not add any new components to v4, or update it to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. After 12 months, we’ll revisit the data and decide whether we need to extend the period of support.

We should regularly revisit this and decide if we still want to be doing this.

Who needs to work on this

Developers; PA;

Who needs to review this

Developers