Nothing makes us happier at mySociety than finding out that our work is doing some good in the world — and an unexpected email from a happy FixMyStreet user certainly put a big smile on all of our faces.

Michael, who lives and works in London, wrote: 

• “FixMyStreet has allowed so many people to report so many issues that directly affect their lives, and get them fixed without delay, being able to hold councils to account by its transparency and nature.

• “Thousands of improvements up and down the country have been made possible by your team’s hard work and genius ideas to get this website up and running and continuing to function.”

Well! Once we’d come down from all that praise, we thought we’d ask Michael more about his experiences, and what has made him such a keen — and effective — FixMyStreet user. He began with a bit of self-reflection.

“What we are doing on FixMyStreet is making a long-term difference to our wellbeing and environment.”

“I’ve always been interested in urban design, streetscapes, architecture, and how our living environment can be improved,” he explained. “It all started when I was a child, building a beachfront city out of Lego. I also used to play a lot of SimCity, so am kind of used to being able to shape the urban environment, albeit in the virtual world! 

“Architecture and the built environment is an interest I’ve kept into adulthood. But also, I’ve always been quite politically engaged — writing letters to MPs, trying to get things improved  — and FixMyStreet is the perfect platform to combine my interests for hopefully the betterment of our communities and societies.”

These pieces fell into place in 2023, when Michael made his first report on FixMyStreet. 

“Friends from other countries are amazed by the technology and the responsiveness of the councils thanks to FixMyStreet.”

“It was a blocked drainage gully: nothing very exciting! But when I realised the potential for change, and how easy it was to report things and get them fixed pretty quickly, I soon moved onto bigger things — with a particular interest in improving accessibility for wheelchair users and vision impaired pedestrians. Broken paving slabs, trip hazards, planters blocking routes, that sort of thing.

“But generally, I just keep my eyes open when I’m out and about, and try to see how I can improve things. I’ve even taught my grandmother how to use it — she’s pretty good at it!” 

Michael’s original email contained an impressive list of everything he’s managed to get improved with FixMyStreet, so we asked him whether any of them stood out as particularly satisfying.  

“Well, it’s great to get streetlights fixed, but no one really notices that when they are working again! 

“On the other hand, I submitted reports of missing street trees, and to my surprise, the council responded by planting brand new ones! A cherry tree, and, following a report I made when visiting family on the Isle of Wight, a palm tree on the seafront.

“I was able to use Google StreetView to show that many years previously there had been trees at this location, which had since died and been removed. 

“It’s also really pleasing to be able to report any maintenance issues with trees so the council can come out and tend to them. Trees don’t have computer access — or even hands to type  — so it’s really good that we humans can do this for them!”

What’s really nice is that improvements like these will provide a lasting improvement. 

“Once a street is fixed, it generally stays that way: new paving slabs can last 50 years or more, so what we are doing on FixMyStreet is making a long-term difference to our wellbeing and environment.”

“If one wheelchair user can have a more pleasant and easier day because of a fix I’ve reported on FixMyStreet, I can feel good about myself.”

And then there’s the feeling of doing good for our fellow humans: “If one wheelchair user can have a more pleasant and easier day because of a fix I’ve reported on FixMyStreet, I can feel good about myself. I quite like being able to point out something when I’m out with friends and say “I got that fixed!”, although I usually just keep it to myself. I will be very pleased to see the trees that I’ve requested grow over time.”

As one of our most enthusiastic users, what does Michael find most appealing about FixMyStreet?

“It’s quick, easy, and addictive! It’s the most satisfying thing to find a problem, report it, and return a few days later to see it’s been fixed: a new paving slab fitted, lines repainted, a new street nameplate installed. 

“Once you start, you just can’t stop! It’s easy to report big or small problems: if there’s a dangerous wall, the council will come out to work with the landowner to make it safe, or even the tiny things like a wait button at a pedestrian crossing not working, the council will come out and get that fixed. 

“I’ve got friends from other countries, and they are amazed by the technology and the responsiveness of the councils thanks to FixMyStreet. There is a lot of care and attention that we sometimes take for granted in this country, and a lot of people who want to make a difference. 

“I feel like I’m working with thousands of like-minded people to get this country fixed up and working the way it ought to. I’m a big believer that we can all be improvers of our built environment — we don’t need to think “Oh, someone else will do something about that”. 

“We can all do something, no matter how small, and FixMyStreet is an extremely easy way to manage that. We’ve all got to live on this planet, so we might as well all do something to make it a bit better, however we can.”

We were curious to see some examples of Michael’s successful reports, and he was happy to oblige, showing us a ‘look left’ marking changed to reflect the fact that cycles come from the right; loose paving slabs and broken kerbstones that have since been attended to; and a disintegrating planter now rebuilt.

He also sent us these photos (click to see them at a larger size), showing that cherry tree that he was instrumental in getting planted; and a cabinet box that was moved to make wheelchair access along the pavement possible.

Something that’s woven through mySociety’s values, and the services we provide, is the idea that we all contribute to making the world a better place — and that’s how Michael sees things, too.

“We all spend a lot of our time out and about, walking and driving in cities and the countryside, and it’s hugely important to me — and hopefully many others — that our streets are as clean and well-maintained as they can be.

“If we can all improve our environment, this will help people to feel better in their environments too. It’s easy to feel depressed in a depressing environment, and it’s easier to feel positive in a clean, well-maintained environment. It’s a win-win!” 

Thank you so much to Michael for sharing his thoughts about FixMyStreet. We hope they will inspire others to feel the same way about their own neighbourhoods, and get reporting on FixMyStreet.

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Banner image: Krzysztof Hepner

What a year it’s been for FixMyStreet Pro, now the official street reporting system for 21 authorities across the country.

Growth…

During 2019 we’ve welcomed Bexley, Cheshire East, Hackney, Northamptonshire, Hounslow Highways, Westminster, Island Roads (Isle of Wight), Peterborough, and now Transport for London to the list of Pro clients.

In all, that adds up to 6.5 million residents who can now report problems such as potholes, faulty street lights or vandalism, either on FixMyStreet.com or on their councils’ own websites.

And if you consider that TfL covers all of Greater London, a further 7.5 million residents and countless commuters, tourists and visitors to the city are also covered for reporting on overground and underground stations, red routes, bus stops, etc.

In all cases, reports pass directly into the authorities’ internal systems, making for swift resolution and the ability to keep the report-maker informed of progress at every step.

…and improvement 

It hasn’t been all about expansion, though. This year, we’ve also been adding further features for councils to the FixMyStreet Pro offering. It’s worth noting, perhaps, that improvements for councils always translate into improvements for residents too, either in terms of quicker report processing, better status updates, or public money saved — and often all three.

Here’s a rundown of the new features we’ve introduced this year:

• Councils can add assets like street lights and trees to the map so reports are made in precisely the right location.
• If you’re trying to report a problem that’s already been logged, you’ll be alerted and can sign up to get updates on the original.
• Our new dashboard heatmaps show council staff at a glance where problems are.
• We made changes to the way councils can manage categories, easily adding context-specific guidance for the report maker…
• … and also made it so that a subcategory can belong to more than one parent.
• Managers can now assign roles to team members much more easily, too.

Getting out and about

We attended Highways UK in Brum and the LGA conference in Bournemouth — it was good to meet so many of our clients and those considering whether FixMyStreet Pro might be a good fit for their needs.

And we were delighted to meet up with residents in Westminster and let them put the FixMyStreet to test while we watched and learned.

Looking forward to 2020

We’ve already been carrying out some research with client authorities, and we’ll be continuing this work into the new year. We also have some development planned.

• Conducting user testing to see how people use the input forms, what might be confusing and how this can be addressed…
• …and further user testing to observe how people use FixMyStreet on mobile devices.
• We’ll be talking to District Councils to see how their needs differ from other authorities, and how we can meet those needs.
• Meanwhile we’ll be giving the FixMyStreet app a much-needed update.
• We’ll make it easier for staff to add the email address of someone who requests updates on an existing report.
• And lots more!

We’re really looking forward to getting our teeth into these features and then rolling them out to our client councils in 2020.

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Image: Nadine Shaabana

Back in November, we announced our new partnership with Transport for London. We’re now pleased to say that the new Street Care service is live.

If you’re a seasoned user of FixMyStreet, there’s no learning curve required: you can proceed exactly as normal. If you prefer, you can carry on making reports through the national website at FixMyStreet.com or via the FixMyStreet app.

The only difference is that now, if the issue is the responsibility of TfL, that’s where your report will be routed, and that’s where updates will come from to let you know when the fix is in progress or completed.

The new service covers potholes, roadworks, bus shelters and traffic lights on the capital’s busiest roads — the ‘red routes’, which make up only 5% of the city’s highways, but account for a whopping 30% of traffic. Users can also report graffiti and flyposting, problems with hoardings, scaffolding and mobile cranes, street lights and damaged trees.

As ever, the underlying FixMyStreet platform means that you don’t need to think about who is responsible for your issue. If a problem is reported and it’s nothing to do with TfL, it’ll be automatically routed to the relevant borough or authority.

Glynn Barton, TfL’s Director of Network Management, said: “The TfL Street Care service will give people more information about the work we are doing on London’s road network and at bus stops and reassure Londoners that we really care about getting things fixed.”

It’s one more bit of joined-up thinking for the capital, that will make reporting easier for residents, commuters, and visitors, while also bringing increased efficiency at every stage of the process. We’re delighted to see it up and running.

See TfL’s press release here.
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Image: Giammarco Boscaro

We know that in many cases, when we install FixMyStreet Pro for a new council, we’re bringing not only a smooth reporting interface for residents, but also a better day-to-day experience for staff. In the case of Peterborough City Council, that was very much the case.

A very manual process

Peterborough had been using a stopgap solution for street reports, after the service they had been using ceased to exist. So, for some time, residents had been asked to make their reports through basic online forms. Not too onerous, but clunky enough.

The real pain point was mostly experienced, however, by council personnel. Customer services staff had the job of manually transferring the details from a spreadsheet and into the council’s Confirm CRM, where highways inspectors could pick up the reports and act upon them.

Then, once an issue had been resolved, inspectors manually updated another spreadsheet to let the customer service centre know of the status change, in case the report-maker called for an update.

There was no automated means by which a user could be updated with progress on reports, or told when it had been fixed.

So in short, FixMyStreet Pro will be making life easier all round, for staff and for residents. Plus the easier internal workflow should save a substantial amount of time and money, while keeping citizens engaged and informed every step of the way.

Improved efficiency

Councillor Farooq Mohammed said, “The introduction of FixMyStreet has brought in significant improvements to the services PCC provide to its residents. FixMyStreet not only brings efficiencies to various service departments, it is very user friendly and easy to use for our residents. This improves the response time to our residents.”

And Peterborough’s ICT Project Manager Jason Dalby added, “mySociety fully understood the challenges we face as a local authority and very quickly turned our requirements into an automated fault reporting system with integration into our Highways back office Confirm system, improving our efficiency by eliminating manual data entry.

“We are proud to be partners with mySociety and continue to work closely with them to improve FixMyStreet for our mutual benefit”.

We’ll continue working with the council over the next few months on their other service areas too, so watch this space.

If you’re a council and there’s potential for efficiencies  in your reporting system (whether large or small), do check out the FixMyStreet Pro website, and then get in touch.

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Image: Dun.can (CC by/2.0)

FixMyStreet’s offering for Londoners becomes ever better, as we announce a new partnership with Transport for London (TfL).

For anyone making reports within Greater London, this will mean a whole new level of connectedness — with no extra effort required from you. Just make a report as usual, and if the issue is the responsibility of TfL the details will automatically be whizzed off to them.

It will cover reports about defects including  the TfL road network (red routes), bus stops and shelters, traffic lights and trees.

Better still, you don’t have to make the report directly on FixMyStreet.com for this to come into action. Log the issue via any of our London client borough councils’ sites — currently Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich, Hounslow, and Westminster — and the same smart routing will apply.

This goes both ways: so if you report something on TfL’s site that’s actually a council responsibility, the report will get forwarded to them — and that applies to all boroughs, FixMyStreet Pro clients or not.

Watch this space and we’ll let you know when it’s all hooked up and ready for you to use.

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Image: Alex Parsons

GCloud 11 is live: it’s the latest iteration of GOV.UK’s Digital Marketplace, making it easier for those in the public sector to find and procure cloud-based software services — including ours.

This time around there are two offerings from mySociety: FixMyStreet Pro, which has been on GCloud since 2017, and FOI for Councils, available via this channel for the first time.

Regular followers will be well aware that FixMyStreet Pro is a street fault reporting service which can integrate with any existing council system, offering great opportunities to cut costs and increase efficiency.

Meanwhile our FOI for Councils service streamlines authorities’ FOI workflows and reduces unnecessary requests, relieving the burden in what is often an overstretched resource.

The great benefit of GCloud from the public sector point of view is that suppliers come ready-verified, saving the time and inconvenience of going through the regular procurement process. All the information you need about the service is readily accessible, and then when you’ve made your decision it’s very simple to get things moving.

We’re pleased to offer these two services via GCloud — and will be equally happy to answer any questions you may have.

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Image: Chuttersnap

It’s obviously good citizen behaviour to report something that needs fixing to your council, whether it’s a pothole that could cause an accident, or a broken streetlight that has plunged the area into darkness.

But there’s one type of report that isn’t very useful to councils, and in fact brings unnecessary costs and inconvenience: when you tell the council about an issue that’s already been flagged up by someone else.

FixMyStreet has always been helpful in this regard. It was groundbreaking in displaying all reports in public, unlike most council systems when we were first developing it. A user who goes to make a report can see right away if there’s already a pin in that spot, and check whether the existing issue is the same one they were going to add.

Now we’ve taken that concept a step further in some work which we’re trialling on Bath & NE Somerset’s implementation of FixMyStreet Pro.

When a user starts to make a report, the system checks to see if there are any other open reports in the same category within a small radius. If it finds any, you’ll see a prompt, like this:

All similar reports will appear here. If you think one might be identical, but aren’t sure, you can click ‘read more’ to see the full text along with any photos attached to the report:

And if you recognise it as the issue you were about to report, you click the green button and will be given the option to subscribe to it, so you know when it’s being seen to, effectively being kept just as up to date as you would be if you’d made the original report:

If it’s not the same issue, no worries: just click ‘report a new problem’ and you can do just that:

Bath & NE Somerset will run this feature as a trial over the next month; then once they’ve got feedback from their users, we’ll hopefully offer it to every other council on the Avenue tier of FixMyStreet Pro.

If you come across this feature while making a report in Bath or environs, do let us know how it works for you.

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Image: Kevin Grieve

Northamptonshire is the latest council to adopt FixMyStreet Pro as their official street reporting system. If you come across something amiss on the streets of Corby, Kettering, Daventry or anywhere else in the county, you can file a report on the council website — or do it on the nationwide site FixMyStreet.com and it’ll be routed to the council too.

It’s been something of a full circle for Northants: in recent years, the authority had returned any reports sent through FixMyStreet, asking residents to submit via their own interface instead. The aim was to avoid ‘rekeying’ the details from emails into their inhouse system, a time-intensive task for staff — so we’re especially glad to be able to integrate FixMyStreet and drop reports directly into their backend.

So, what brought about this change of direction? Timing, and our reputation, it would seem.

Northants had been using their own frontend system named Street Doctor, coupled with the Exor asset management system behind the scenes — but when the contract with Exor was up for renewal, they decided it was time for a change, giving them a hard deadline by which a solution needed to be put in place.

The council chose Yotta Alloy as their new asset management system, but that decision in turn meant that the council’s contractors, Kier, had to find a new frontend, since Yotta’s newer technology couldn’t align with Street Doctor’s older systems. Northants considered building their own interface, but we’re glad to say that Kier recommended purchasing FixMyStreet rather than reinventing the wheel. While the opportunity and budget were both there for the council to create something bespoke, it was recognised that by purchasing FixMyStreet off the shelf, they pass any risk on to us — and we’re happy to shoulder it.

It’s great to have the confidence of a contractor like Kier, as it shows that FixMyStreet Pro is appreciated and trusted right across the sector. Kier themselves won’t need to integrate with FixMyStreet, however: Yotta Alloy will act as the middleman, from which Kier will pick up reports. The information provided by the user will ensure they go to the right team.

As Kier inspectors and maintenance workers update the status of reports on their system, updates will flow into Yotta Alloy. That information will then automatically be pushed back to FixMyStreet and to the original report maker. And should a council inspector create a new report in Yotta, this too will be displayed on FixMyStreet, helping to prevent the duplicate reporting of issues that are already in hand.

Meanwhile, the council’s own customer service staff will be inputting any reports they receive by phone, email or in person, directly to FixMyStreet Pro. Whatever the channel used, reports will flow seamlessly into the right places.

So Northants have ended up with a neat solution, involving three different suppliers all working in harmony. The net result, we believe, will be a quicker, more integrated and more effective service for the citizens of Northants.

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Images: Malc McDonald (CC-by-sa/2.0)

Our client councils continue to test our integration mettle with the many and varied internal systems they use.

One nice thing about FixMyStreet Pro, from the council point of view, is that it can play nicely with any internal council system, passing reports wherever they are needed and feeding updates back to the report-maker and onto the live site. What keeps life interesting is that there’s a huge variety of differing set-ups across every council, so there’s always something new to learn.

Oxfordshire County Council are a case in point. They’ve been a client of ours since 2013, and back in May they asked if we could work with them to integrate their new highways asset maintenance system HIAMS, supplied by WDM, and make sure the whole kaboodle could work with FixMyStreet Pro as well.

At the same time, they needed an update to their co-branded version of FixMyStreet to match a new design across the council website. FixMyStreet can take on any template so that it fits seamlessly into the rest of the site.

As FixMyStreet was well embedded and citizens were already using it, it was vital to ensure that the disruption was kept to a minimum, both for report-makers and members of staff dealing with enquiries.

We worked closely with WDM and Oxfordshire County Council to create a connector that would pass information the user entered on Oxfordshire’s FixMyStreet installation or the national FixMyStreet website into the new WDM system, with the correct categories and details already completed.

Once we saw data going into the system successfully, the next task was to get updates back out. One single report could take a long journey, being passed from WDM onto another system and then back through to WDM before an update came to the user. We didn’t want to leave the report-maker wondering what was happening, so it was crucial to ensure that updates came back to them as smoothly and quickly as possible.

The integration between FixMyStreet and WDM is now live and working. Users will receive an update whenever their report’s status is changed within the WDM system, meaning there’s no need for them to follow up with a phone call or email — a win for both citizens and councils.

It all went smoothly from our point of view, but let’s hear from Anna Fitzgerald, Oxfordshire’s Infrastructure Information Management Principal Officer:

“We’ve been using FixMyStreet Pro since 2013 as it’s a system which is easy to integrate and our customers love it.

“From an IT support side; integrating the new system to FixMyStreet Pro was seamless. The team at mySociety have been a pleasure to work with, are extremely helpful, knowledgeable and organised. They make you feel like you are their top priority at all times, nothing was ever an issue.

“Now that we have full integration with the new system, the process of updating our customers happens instantaneously. FixMyStreet Pro has also given us flexibility to change how we communicate with our customers, how often we communicate; and all in real time.

“What’s more, our Members and management team love it as it has greatly reduced the amount of calls to our customer services desk, which saves a lot of money for the council.”

As always, we’re delighted to hear such positive feedback. If you’re from a council and would like to explore the benefits FixMyStreet Pro could bring you, please do get in touch.

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Image: Suad Kamardeen

A big welcome to Rutland, the latest local authority to adopt FixMyStreet Pro as their street fault reporting platform. If you’re a resident of what has been described as the UK’s prettiest county, we hope that you’ll enjoy using FixMyStreet to keep it that way.

You can make your reports on the council’s site here, or if you’re already used to the main FixMyStreet. com website or via our mobile app, you’ll find that all reports go into the same central database, and can be seen in all three places.

As a resident, all you need to know is that it all works, but councils — especially those using the Salesforce CRM — will be interested to know that behind the scenes there have been some interesting tweaks.

How it looks in Salesforce

Salesforce is a very common CRM, in use across many councils as well as countless other businesses and organisations, so this integration stands as a useful proof of concept when it comes to FixMyStreet integration.

For Rutland, FixMyStreet reports now drop directly into Salesforce, from where they can be allocated to the Highways team. Click on any of the images below to see them at a larger size.

Here’s what the list of all reports looks like in Salesforce. In theory, if the council want, this could also include reports from other sources such as residents’ phone calls or direct emails.	Staff may filter the reports by category: here we can see just those within the ‘roads and highways’ category.
Each report is listed within Salesforce as a ‘case’, listed in a queue.	And this is what it looks like when a report comes in that has a photo attached to it  — that’s also accessible within Salesforce.

Staff now have the choice of updating reports within Salesforce, or, if they prefer (as many do), through the FixMyStreet admin interface.

This is our first Salesforce integration, and it was made possible through the use of an API, developed by Rutland’s own tech team. At our end, all we had to do was write the code to integrate with it, and boom, two-way communication.

Even better, any reports made through other means can be pulled from Salesforce and into the FixMyStreet system: so a council staff member inputting reports from, say, an email report or phone call can input it into the interface they’ve always used.

We’re delighted to add Salesforce to the list of CRMs FixMyStreet Pro has integrated with. If you’re from a council and would like to find out more, pop over to the FixMyStreet Pro website where you’ll find case studies, pricing, an interactive demo and the chance to join one of our regular online chats.