Gloucester City Council has chosen FixMyStreet Pro as its new online reporting service for local street and environment issues as part of a drive to streamline the reporting process, improve response times and enhance communication with residents and other local authorities.
SocietyWorks is delighted to have launched a brand new installation of its FixMyStreet Pro solution for Gloucester City Council.
Opting for the customised plan for District Councils, which ensures the solution is value appropriate, Gloucester City Council’s installation is branded to complement the Council’s existing online environment and designed to work seamlessly on any device.
The launch includes an API integration between FixMyStreet Pro and the Causeway Alloy asset management system, used by Ubico, the environmental services company part-owned by Gloucester City Council.
Reports of problems managed by Ubico are sent directly into Alloy, and updates are automatically sent back to report-makers, and to anyone else subscribed to the report, helping to manage expectations, improve perceptions and eliminate expensive follow-up contact.
Reports of problems not exclusively managed by Ubico are sent directly to the most relevant team within the Council for action.
Report-makers can locate problems using GPS or by inputting a postcode or street name. Asset layers shared from Alloy are displayed on the FixMyStreet Pro map to encourage accurate selections when reporting problems relating to, for example, bridges or street lights.
All reports sent to Gloucester City Council are displayed publicly on the FixMyStreet Pro map to improve transparency. Where an issue within the same category and location has already been reported, FixMyStreet Pro suggests the existing report to the report-maker and, if it is the same problem, encourages them to subscribe instead of reporting again.
Categories for issues that are the responsibility of Gloucestershire County Council are also available for report-makers to select via the service. Reports within these categories are automatically diverted to Gloucestershire, which has its own installation of FixMyStreet Pro.
In instances of crossover, where some assets are managed by Gloucester City Council and others are managed by Gloucestershire County Council, FixMyStreet Pro ensures that reports always go to the correct authority.
Meanwhile, where motorways and trunk roads, like the A38 and the M5, pass through or alongside Gloucester City Council and Gloucestershire County Council’s boundaries, FixMyStreet Pro automatically diverts reports to National Highways.
Should a user attempt to make a report of a problem that is the responsibility of another authority, the service will redirect them to the national FixMyStreet site, run by SocietyWorks’ parent charity mySociety.
Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “FixMyStreet Pro exists to make reporting local place-based problems online easy for members of the public, and for the authorities responsible for them.
“The launch of FixMyStreet Pro for Gloucester City Council unifies the reporting process between the district and county authorities, enabling each to offer residents who make the effort to report problems as smooth and responsive a service as possible.
“It has been wonderful to work with the team at Gloucester City Council and Causeway on this launch, and I look forward to welcoming Gloucester City into our lively user groups, where they will help us to shape the future of the solution.”