We’re thrilled to announce we have been shortlisted for the Technology award at the LGC Awards 2023 in recognition of our work in partnership with Buckinghamshire Council to unify the fault reporting process between the unitary authority and its 171 parish and town councils.
The Technology award celebrates developments that bring about increased efficiency, better use of resources and effective behaviour change – all things that we’re proud to say have been achieved through FixMyStreet Pro, our street and environment fault reporting solution, at Buckinghamshire Council.
Importantly, the new functionality developed through this project can be used by other authorities using FixMyStreet Pro. It can also be adapted to improve report triaging to other external bodies who take responsibility for certain issues.
Our work with Buckinghamshire Council
This collaborative project involved developing some innovative new functionality for Buckinghamshire’s instance of FixMyStreet Pro to enable automatic triaging of reports to town and parish councils and better ways of passing reports between authorities.
The functionality makes reporting problems easier for residents by working out on their behalf whether the local parish, town or unitary authority is responsible.
“We are using technology to get the report to the right team, as well as managing customer expectations at the first point of contact. This is a game changer!”
Lloyd Jeffries – Service Director (Business Operations), Buckinghamshire Council
Meanwhile, for Buckinghamshire Council and the local parish and town councils, FixMyStreet Pro eliminates the need for staff to manually triage reports, creating a much smoother user experience for all involved, and reducing costs by cutting down administration and failure demand.
Crucially, this new development gives parish and town councils the opportunity to benefit from FixMyStreet’s ability to improve the reporting experience and close the feedback loop. Not only can residents now report problems out of hours, but the parish and town councils, who do not usually have the facility to have their own CRM system, can respond to all reports simply by replying to the emails they receive, which will then update the report and the customer.
Impact so far
In a short time, Buckinghamshire is already seeing benefits such as the elimination of duplicate reports between the unitary council and the parish and town councils, plus a vast reduction in progress chasing calls (already decreased by nearly 50% compared to last year).
For grass and hedge cutting reports alone, by reducing email administration and progress chasing calls into both the council’s Customer Service Centre and into parish and town councils, Buckinghamshire Council anticipates savings of circa £50,000 per year, not including the savings that will be made by the parish and town councils!
Lloyd Jeffries, Service Director (Business Operations) at Buckinghamshire Council said: “We have a published Customer Service Standard, this new process is part of our Customer Promise and definitely makes reporting issues easier by joining things up for our customer, both inside the council and with our local partners. In addition, we have seen a significant decrease in progress chasing calls from the public, compared to the same period last year. We are using technology to get the report to the right team, as well as managing customer expectations at the first point of contact. This is a game changer!”
Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “Buckinghamshire Council has been a very proactive user of FixMyStreet Pro since 2018, helping to shape the development of the solution for the benefit of residents. We’re so pleased to see this partnership and the technology we have developed together recognised by the LGC alongside some other incredible development projects. Good luck to all the finalists.”
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If you’d like to see FixMyStreet Pro in action and discover how it could work for your authority, request a demo.