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While most commonly associated with the reporting of problems on streets and highways, FixMyStreet Pro can also be used by authorities to handle reports of problems in places a little more off the beaten track. 

An example of this can be found in the way Surrey County Council has incorporated fault reporting for countryside estates managed by the Council into its dedicated version of the service.

Corresponding to categories managed within its integrated asset management system, Confirm, Surrey’s FixMyStreet Pro allows users to choose from an updated list of categories which now includes issues relating to those on countryside estates.

Upon selecting one of the countryside estate categories, FixMyStreet Pro displays an asset layer (the yellow shape on the map) to help users visualise where reports can be made within the selected category.  

For certain categories, individual assets within an estate such as gates or signposts are also displayed (represented as small yellow dots) to further help users make precise and easy-to-triage reports. 

FixMyStreet Pro sends any reports made within Surrey’s countryside estate categories directly to the exact team that can respond. Updates made to reports within Confirm are sent back to report-makers to keep them informed of progress.

Where an issue is not the responsibility of the Council, or the issue is an emergency and should be made through a different channel, FixMyStreet Pro’s site messaging functionality can be used to divert or signpost.

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FixMyStreet Pro is available to a variety of public authorities, from all levels of councils to highways agencies to housing associations, and can be moulded to individual requirements. 

For more information about FixMyStreet Pro, send us a message and we’ll get back to you. 

SocietyWorks has completed a new integration between the national FixMyStreet site and Enfield Borough Council’s Verint System. 

Making use of open data standards, reports from members of the public made via FixMyStreet are now sent directly into Verint, from where they are triaged between the Council’s Exor and Assure systems according to the reporting category selected.

As well as removing the need to manually re-key emails into Verint, the integration also allows Enfield to mirror the reporting processes followed via its other reporting channels, and to provide updates to users on their reports.

Using both the FixMyStreet website and app, users can now make reports of any street-based problems within the Enfield boundary, selecting from an extended list of categories specific to Enfield. 

All reports made to Enfield via FixMyStreet are displayed on the map to help reduce duplication and create visibility of action. Being a networked service, FixMyStreet ensures reports that should go to neighbouring councils or other authorities (such as TfL) are automatically diverted.

The integration with FixMyStreet marks the start of a transformational journey for Enfield, harnessing existing open technology to ensure reporting local problems is as easy as possible across a wide range of platforms, while eliminating avoidable rekeying, expensive emails and broken feedback loops.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “Engaging with interoperable platforms and removing barriers to reporting for members of the public is a smart way for councils to improve processes and foster better community engagement. 

“We’re really pleased to have worked with Enfield Borough Council on this project, which will not only give local people more choice over reporting local problems, but will also ensure reports always go to the correct place.”

Integrating with FixMyStreet using open data standards, like our own Open311 API, gives councils the flexibility to connect with FixMyStreet, enjoying all of the benefits of being part of a secure, maintained and joined-up reporting service, while also retaining their own existing processes and other systems. 

At SocietyWorks we’re proud to have a small but incredible team of people using their skills and experience to support our public sector clients and help our parent charity mySociety achieve its ambitious objectives. 

In this series of blog posts, we speak to the people behind SocietyWorks to share their stories.

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Onyeka Onyekwelu is an expert in inclusive and sustainable design and strategic delivery of public services. She leads digital transformation projects with public and private sector and multilateral organisations at Public Digital.

Before this, she led strategic engagement for the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) and was appointed as one of seven inaugural No.10 Innovation Fellows.

Her passion for improving the inclusion of marginalised communities shines through in her work as a Non-Executive Director for SocietyWorks. She joined the board in November 2022, bringing with her a truly incredible breadth of experience in digital strategy and stakeholder engagement.

Like all of our board members, Onyeka gives her time and extensive expertise to SocietyWorks voluntarily. 

Do you want to start by telling us about yourself and what motivates you?

Onyeka: I’ve always questioned ‘power’, and why society is structured in the way that it is, to favour so few. That’s what motivated my early career aspirations to be a Barrister. 

Fast-forward to leading the Young Bar’s response to digitising Youth Courts, and I found myself asking the same questions again…pivoting to digital in an attempt to answer it. I’m still trying to do so now. It’s a sticky problem.

What does a typical day look like for you?

O: An average day for me looks something like this:

Pre-9am Daily Deposit

This is “me time” when I commit to self development like journaling, reading or walking. 

9-5 Working Hours

Consulting with clients from Public Digital. This could look like anything from facilitating workshops to coaching leaders and building multidisciplinary teams. I like how varied the work is, and the context-switching keeps me on my toes.

5-9 Off-Duty

Usually spent on my broader professional development. So you can either catch me at a networking event, or working on my experiment as an inaugural member of CPI’s The Collective. 

9-11 Wind Down

I end the day gratitude journaling, praying and then reading a pre-released copy of a book (I’m a nano influencer on the side) for review.

What brought you to SocietyWorks?

O: The honest answer is: Amelia (SocietyWorks’ Commercial Director) and Angela (SocietyWorks’ Managing Director)! I was approached by both of them to apply and I was confused at first as I only really knew about mySociety. After researching SocietyWorks, I was all in!

I’d heard nothing but stellar reviews about the team and their products during my time at LOTI, so I was humbled to have been approached. 

I had just stepped down as Vice Chair from a Governing Board of a local school, so the stars were aligned.

What are you hoping to achieve in your position on the SocietyWorks board?

O: I’m loving learning more about the products (old and new), and ways of working. What I’d love to see more of, and contribute to, is thinking about how we engage with potential clients differently. There’s definitely scope to support that in the current strategy.

What does being a board member for a social enterprise belonging to a non-profit organisation mean to you?

O: Being a Non Executive Director for a non-profit like SocietyWorks means bringing both care and challenge to the table. It’s about ensuring the organisation is delivering impact for the people it’s here to serve, and ensuring that the needs of the most marginalised are considered, while also providing strategic oversight and asking the hard questions that keep us honest and ambitious.

I see my role as a steward of trust: offering my skills and experience to support the awesome leaders and team, safeguarding the organisation’s values, and making sure decisions are inclusive, ethical and future-proof. I also believe representation matters. Executive boards should reflect the communities they serve, so I try to take my role in broadening perspectives seriously.

Thinking about the challenges facing the public sector, how important is the work SocietyWorks does?

O: Where do I start? From shrinking budgets, rising expectations, digital inequality, and fractured trust, the challenges are complex and deeply human. That’s why SocietyWorks’ products and services are so important. 

In a climate where doing more with less is the norm, SocietyWorks proves that people-centred digital delivery isn’t just possible, but it works. At its heart, SocietyWorks helps councils and public sector organisations to deliver services that are efficient, and also accessible and accountable to the people they serve.

By designing digital tools that are intuitive, inclusive, and user-centred, SocietyWorks supports the kind of quiet, everyday innovation that makes a meaningful difference. It’s not just about tech; it’s about building public trust. Creating services that work well for everyone, especially those often left behind, is a powerful way to show that local government can be responsive, empathetic, and modern.

Thanks so much for talking to us, Onyeka!

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Connect with Onyeka on LinkedIn, or if you would like to learn more about SocietyWorks and what we do, drop us a message. 

Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) represents a moment of real change for councils and, critically, the people they serve. In times of such transition, the way people interact with core services like residential and commercial waste, street and highway fault reporting, or environmental complaints can feel unfamiliar.

At SocietyWorks, we’ve been alongside councils through various structural transitions over the last 20+ years, and one thing remains clear: consistency and keeping access to essential services simple for users is key to supporting a positive transition.

Why front-end consistency matters

Understandably, most people don’t care about the internal mechanics of their local authority. They want to check when their bin is being collected or tell the council about a pothole — quickly, easily and without confusion.

But when councils reorganise, boundaries blur and suddenly there are new obstacles to achieving basic tasks. From not knowing which authority to contact to making sense of new processes, uncertainty like this risks a rise in calls to contact centres, the potential for issues to go unreported and frustrated members of the public. 

That’s why our experience shows keeping the front-end experience consistent is vital for service continuity.

What councils need to consider while navigating LGR

Keep user journeys consistent

Familiar interfaces build confidence and reduce service costs associated with confusion and repeated enquiries.

When Northamptonshire County Council reorganised into North Northamptonshire Council and West Northamptonshire Council, our FixMyStreet Pro solution helped ensure that residents could continue reporting street and environment issues without disruption — even as services and systems were rationalised around the new authorities.

Choose flexible and interoperable software

Use specialist platforms that can plug into different back-office or case management systems so that you can make whatever changes are required while you restructure without disrupting the citizen-facing side of the process.

This is something we helped the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames and the London Borough of Sutton with while they navigated a full in-cab system switchover. Using their respective instances of our front-end WasteWorks portal, users could still check bin days, report issues and manage their waste needs just like before. This meant that while internal integrations and workflows evolved, the public interface stayed predictable.

Avoid creating silos and dependencies

Where reorganisation involves redistributing responsibilities to parish and town councils, it’s essential to keep data flows smooth to reinforce trust and prevent failure demand. 

Take the work we completed with Buckinghamshire Council following its transition to Unitary status which made it possible to automatically triage reports to the local-level councils and gave them the ability to respond to users to keep the feedback loop closed. This enabled residents to see continuity in service delivery even when governance changed.

The bottom line

LGR doesn’t (and shouldn’t!) have to mean disruption for members of the public, or for staff members using your front-end services on behalf of those who cannot use digital channels. 

With a considered approach and the right technological scaffolding, council services can maintain their familiarity to users while forging increased trust and engagement.

Our work with councils has shown that it’s often the smaller, simpler digital transitions that create the greatest transformation in public service delivery.

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Want some help navigating LGR through citizen-centred technology? Get in touch. 

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Image: Laura Materna on Unsplash

A new feature has been released for FixMyStreet giving users the option to start their reports with a photo, the data from which can be extracted to speed up the reporting process.

As well as making the reporting process quicker, this new functionality should also increase the accuracy of reports, removing the need for users who can’t or don’t want to report the problem at its location to remember exactly where it was at a later point in time.

Where a photo has been taken using a smartphone with geo-tagging enabled, FixMyStreet can now use the data stored in the uploaded photo to identify the location of the problem the user wants to report. 

Once uploaded, FixMyStreet will display a map with a pin dropped at the location identified. Users then have the option to either move the map pin if necessary, or continue with the report.

If a user does not have photo geo-tagging turned on, or the device they are using is not compatible with this functionality, they can still begin reports with a photo, but they will also need to identify the location of the problem either through GPS (if currently at the location) or using a postcode, street name or area.

Users can still report problems on FixMyStreet without using a photo if they can’t take one or don’t have one.

Photo-first reporting has been rolled out across the FixMyStreet website and app, as well as to all cobranded instances of FixMyStreet Pro.

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Got a question about photo-first reporting on FixMyStreet? Get in touch.

We were pleased to discover that FixMyStreet, mySociety’s long-running reporting service for local public realm faults, has been recognised in the Newspeak House Political Technology Awards. The awards are a year-long (hypothetical) grant making exercise, undertaken by the 2024–25 Fellows of Newspeak House’s Introduction to Political Technology programme.

Newspeak House, an independent residential college founded in 2015, brings together practitioners and researchers from across civil society and the public sector to explore how technology can strengthen democratic systems.

Within this landscape, FixMyStreet stood out. The 2024-25 cohort described it as “a civic reporting tool that allows residents to flag local infrastructure issues directly to the relevant authority,” praising its ability to support real-time public participation, improve transparency, and enhance everyday engagement with place.

In their reflections, they captured something that resonates strongly with our mission:

“FixMyStreet is a classic for a reason. It’s a clean, practical tool that opens a direct line between people and local government. But what struck me was the deeper shift it invites: it makes place-based maintenance visible, collective, and reportable.”

That shift — towards shared visibility and collective responsibility for the places we live — has always been at the heart of FixMyStreet. We’re grateful to the Newspeak House cohort for recognising its continued impact within the broader ecosystem of political and civic technology.

An open, map-based solution that’s as relevant now as it ever has been

When FixMyStreet first launched in 2007 it was in response to many councils not offering an easy-to-use online reporting service — if they offered one at all. Many citizens still prefer FixMyStreet because of its simplicity and because it removes the need for them to know which council is responsible for what problem.

These days, FixMyStreet acts as a national reporting platform, bringing all of the local authorities and government organisations together on one system, triaging reports between councils at all levels, highways agencies and housing associations.

Councils and other public authorities can interact with FixMyStreet in several different ways:

• Receive reports via email (for free) to whichever email address(es) you like for different issues;
• Set up your own (free!) integration using Open311 to have reports drop into a system of your choosing;
• We can build and maintain an integration for you (carries an annual fee);
• You can become a FixMyStreet Pro user. FixMyStreet Pro is a more advanced version of FixMyStreet, designed to eliminate the significant costs councils incur from duplicate reporting, unnecessary contact and failure demand.

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Want to understand more about FixMyStreet? Contact us for a chat. 

Aberdeenshire Council is the latest local authority to switch to a fully integrated version of FixMyStreet Pro for managing street, highway and environment fault reports from members of the public.

A brand new, customised FixMyStreet Pro service has been launched by SocietyWorks for Aberdeenshire Council to create a better and more efficient reporting experience. 

Designed as a progressive web app, FixMyStreet Pro enables Aberdeenshire to offer a digital service accessible from any device, either as a web page or downloaded to a home screen as an app, and includes offline reporting functionality. 

The initial launch includes an API integration into the Council’s existing asset management system Confirm, enabling report data and updates to be shared to and from report-makers automatically. This integration also enables assets such as bridges, drains and streetlights to be displayed on the map for increased report accuracy. 

The launch also includes an integration between FixMyStreet Pro and mygov.scot, giving residents and council staff the ability to log in to Abderseenshire’s FixMyStreet Pro service using existing council credentials.

To help Aberdeenshire Council reduce duplication and increase transparency, FixMyStreet Pro displays all reports on the map and suggests potential duplicates to users at the point of making a report, with an option to subscribe to the existing report.

Additionally, the service has been connected with the Scottish Road Works Register to display scheduled roadworks and utility works on the map, aiming to eliminate unnecessary contact.

Meanwhile, should a user attempt to report a problem outside of Aberdeenshire’s boundary, the service will divert the report to the correct authority via the national FixMyStreet service, run by SocietyWorks’ parent charity mySociety. 

Bill Lennox, Roads Manager at Aberdeenshire Council, said:

“Aberdeenshire Council recognised a need to improve the customer experience when they contacted us about road related issues. The historic system developed in house had limited functionality and poor integration with our asset management system. For residents, this made the process of notifying us of defects and being updated on progress unsatisfactory.

“We have been working with SocietyWorks to introduce FixMyStreet Pro. This system will integrate with the Council’s website and app to provide a much more streamlined experience for customers. The improvements will mean that customers have greater sight of issues in their area, they will be kept up to date on progress, and they will be provided with more relevant information about the topic they have raised.

“From a maintenance perspective we expect far fewer duplicate enquiries from customers and fewer requests for updates on repair progress. All of this will be delivered by close integration with our asset management system, which means staff will not be required to undertake any additional tasks as part of their day to day working.”

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said:

“When it comes to providing public-facing reporting services for local problems, councils and highways authorities need technology that enables them to work together while keeping citizens at the front and centre.

“As a small social enterprise owned by a charity, it is wonderful to have Aberdeenshire Council’s trust in transforming its highways service provision through our FixMyStreet Pro solution.

“This launch is the first of its kind in Scotland, with Dumfries and Galloway also in development, and represents a new chapter in FixMyStreet Pro’s history. I look forward to following Aberdeenshire’s progress with the new service and adding their influence to FixMyStreet Pro’s future.”

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Find out more about FixMyStreet Pro.

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.” 

Earlier this month we hosted one of our WasteWorks user group events, bringing together the community of councils using the solution to catch up, share experiences and learn from one another.

As part of the event, we ran through some of the new features and improvements that have been added to WasteWorks over the last few months, including:

Small items collections

Working with the London Borough of Sutton, we introduced functionality for their residents to be able to book collections for small items, such as batteries and coffee pods.

As with any functionality built into WasteWorks, the small items collections booking service has been adapted around Sutton’s individual requirements, integrations and operational processes. Read more about it.

Bulky waste collections

Meanwhile, with the London Borough of Bexley, we made it possible for residents to sign up to and pay for a bulky waste collection.

API integrations into the Whitespace Work Software in-cab system and the Capita Pay360 payment service used by Bexley enable a self-service workflow for residents and for staff using WasteWorks on behalf of those who need support. Learn more.

Viewing all reports at a property

It’s often the small things that make the biggest difference, and that is certainly true of the new ‘All reports here’ button, enabling members of staff to quickly navigate to a page viewing all reports for a particular property from a WasteWorks report.

Improvements to collection calendars

Each WasteWorks installation gives users the ability to download their waste collection schedule to an online calendar. We’ve introduced a new calendar help page to make it clearer what options are available, including direct links for popular tools, such as Apple or Google calendars.

Plus, the calendar files themselves are now being cached more often to help deal with wayward calendar applications, and reduce the load on some backend systems.

A bit of form housekeeping

For councils who manage bulky waste collections through WasteWorks, we’ve tidied up the page of the form on which users can add items to be collected, making it look neater and adding more space.

The same has been applied to the emails sent out when a booking is made, ensuring a tidier display of items to be collected.

Add to homepage advice

WasteWorks is a progressive web app (PWA), which means it can be used as a normal web service or downloaded to mobile devices to be used as an app. Each council’s version of WasteWorks now comes with a dedicated page to help guide users through the process of saving the service as an app on their device.

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Want to know more about WasteWorks? Get in touch.

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Among FixMyStreet Pro’s key benefits is its ability to allow councils and other public authorities to incorporate into each installation fault reporting for multiple service areas, flexing around individual needs and creating a consistent reporting experience for users. 

An example of this is the way in which some councils using FixMyStreet Pro have chosen to enable reporting of housing-related issues via their instances of the service to help reduce misreporting and failure demand.

Meanwhile, housing associations themselves can also use the technology as their own, running a reporting service that works in synchronisation with neighbouring councils, triaging reports between them.

As is often the case with FixMyStreet Pro, this functionality can work in different ways, depending on an authority’s individual processes and relationships with housing associations and contractors.

Internal triaging 

Where housing estates are managed by a particular team within the council that is different from the team which set up its FixMyStreet Pro service, reports can be triaged to that team using an asset layer, if the data is available.

Take Brent Council’s FixMyStreet Pro as an example, which enables users to select ‘Council Estate Grounds’ as a category, and then displays on the map an asset layer to make clear where such issues can be reported. 

Should a user make a report within this category, with the map pin placed over the layer, the report will go to Brent’s dedicated estates team directly. As well as helping the council triage reports, this also helps to educate report-makers on who’s responsible for what.

It is also possible to do this without displaying the asset layer, if you would prefer. In these cases, upon selecting a particular report category and dropping the map pin in a certain place, the report will be triaged accordingly, but without the user knowing this is what is happening.  

Signposting

Where it is not possible to directly triage a report to another system or team, FixMyStreet Pro makes it easy to signpost users to the correct place to make their report. 

In such instances, councils can display a message to the user explaining why their report can’t be made via FixMyStreet Pro and where to make it instead. 

Messages can be displayed at various points within the reporting workflow, based on either an asset layer (if available), the location of the map pin or the category or subcategory selected. 

Housing associations using FixMyStreet Pro

As well as enabling councils to incorporate housing-related reports into their services, FixMyStreet Pro can also be used by said housing associations directly, acting as their own reporting service.

The Peabody Housing Association uses FixMyStreet Pro to manage fault reports within Thamesmead, making it easy for local people to report environmental issues such as fly-tipping, pest control, public lighting and problems in or around the canals and lakes — all managed by Peabody.

FixMyStreet Pro’s ability to triage reports nationally means housing associations benefit from being able to manage reports for issues that are their responsibility, while all other reports are automatically triaged to the correct authority. 

With Peabody and its two closest borough councils, Bexley and Greenwich, as well as Transport for London, all using FixMyStreet Pro, the four bodies can work in synchronisation, making it easy for residents to successfully report problems and care for their local community.

For example, in the areas of Thamesmead which sit within the boundary of Greenwich, housing-related issues which are the responsibility of Peabody Housing Association are automatically triaged from the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s FixMyStreet Pro service. The report will not enter Greenwich’s workflow, instead going directly to the correct team at Peabody for response, with no interruption to the workflow for the report-maker.

Categories for caretakers

Additionally, in using the technology for themselves, housing associations can allow their caretakers to use the service to report issues via the same, simple user interface, just like Peabody have done. 

“Caretakers can now make and monitor their reports at the touch of a button, taking ownership of when reports can be closed, or when others need to be chased”

Tom Broad, Head of Environmental Services at Peabody, explains more:

“Just as we had done for residents, we wanted to make it easier for our team of 80+ caretakers that look after the 5,000+ homes in Thamesmead to be able to report the defects they find without having to go via the call centre.

“Working with the team at SocietyWorks, we explored how we could use FixMyStreet Pro to give caretakers a quick and simple way to make reports online, and to stay updated on their progress. The result was to incorporate into the existing service some new, private categories and block asset layers, only visible to caretaker staff when logged in to our FixMyStreet Pro service. Like residents, caretakers can upload photos of the issue and provide as much detail as possible within their reports.

“It’s been a real success; caretakers can now make and monitor their reports at the touch of a button, taking ownership of when reports can be closed, or when others need to be chased. With all reports visible on the map, this new functionality has helped us to plug knowledge gaps whenever a member of staff is off sick or on annual leave, making sure reports are not duplicated and updates accessible to everyone.”

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For more information about FixMyStreet Pro, please send a message to our team.