A crucial component in a comprehensive transformation programme — FixMyStreet Pro immediately pulled its weight improving experiences for Northumberland's residents and staff alike.
Northumberland County Council’s FixMyStreet Pro service launched in the spring of 2023.
As part of the Council’s BEST transformation programme, Northumberland wanted to make significant strides towards better arrangements for reporting of public realm maintenance issues and management of requests, and chose FixMyStreet Pro to achieve this across a broad range of service areas.
Within the wider implementation of FixMyStreet Pro, its application to fault response management across its highways service was given a high priority, ensuring reports of issues on the county’s network of roads and pathways go to the correct team with the correct information—and that report-makers are automatically kept updated on progress.
Since implementation, one area in particular that FixMyStreet Pro has been a key tool for Northumberland is in its efforts to address increasing incidents of highways drainage issues in a more efficient and sustainable way, as presented in a Communities and Place Scrutiny Committee meeting last year.
“It has been a resounding success. The public are using it and we know that from the figures. It’s streamlining our systems and making the workforce more efficient and more productive.”
— Councillor Mark Mather, Cabinet Member for Roads and Highways at Northumberland County Council
Why Northumberland chose FixMyStreet Pro
Like many county councils, Northumberland’s highways maintenance resources have been stretched more and more in recent years by, among other factors, the increased weight of traffic on the roads and increasingly wet winters.
Highways drainage issues were a particular flashpoint for the council. From a reporting perspective, ad hoc reports were impacting on planned cyclic maintenance activity for gully cleansing, while unclear ownership and maintenance of landowner drainage systems led to misreporting and manual intervention.
The Council therefore put together a comprehensive and considered plan to alleviate demand where possible and make better use of resources. Management of in-bound reports from members of the public was identified as one of the key areas for improvement, with three clear goals in mind to help its teams:
Create a single front door for all highways reports;
Increase transparency for better user experience and feedback ;
Improve the quality of data being captured in reports and how this is shared between systems.
Seeing how FixMyStreet Pro had enabled other councils to achieve similar goals, and knowing that it could be integrated into any existing asset management system, Northumberland selected FixMyStreet Pro as its replacement reporting software.
FixMyStreet Pro displays all reports on the map. Different coloured map pins represent problems at different stages of assessment.
Diving in at the deep end
FixMyStreet Pro for Northumberland launched with an API integration into the Causeway Alloy asset management system. This enabled automated updates on reports every time their status changes and the display of assets such as traffic signals and gullies on the map to help improve the accuracy of reports.
And a good job too, because in the first few months of FixMyStreet Pro going live, the county experienced heavy rainfall, leading to over 3,000 reports of highways drainage issues between May and December, most of which involved blocked drains.
With a total of 84,557 recorded gullies covering 67 wards, FixMyStreet Pro’s functionality was immediately put to the test for Northumberland.
Displaying assets on the map
The council was able to set up different categories for different types of drainage issues to help with internal triaging within the integrated system. Upon selecting a drainage related category, users could then select the exact gully that was blocked on the map, and also upload a photo if they were able to, helping maintenance crews respond quickly and efficiently.
As Paul Jones, Director of Environment and Transport at Northumberland County Council explained in a Communities and Place Scrutiny Committee meeting in July 2024:
“In the past that was a real issue for us because you’d have to go out and basically use a bit of guesswork, so it’s a much more effective and efficient use of staff time, getting much better data and they’re able to respond to that data in a much more timely and effective manner as well.”
Report-makers can select specific assets on the map, such as drains or street lights, which are displayed via an asset layer shared from Causeway Alloy and help to increase accuracy.
Driving efficiencies
With so many gullies and lots of seasonal demand, Northumberland needed to be able to minimise duplication wherever possible.
Reports that look to be within a certain radius of an existing report within the same category are suggested to users within the FixMyStreet Pro reporting workflow, and if the problem is the same they can simply subscribe to the existing report instead of double reporting. This means they will also receive any updates on the report’s progress automatically.
Similarly, where a problem is already known about by the council and works are scheduled, this information is displayed on the map and actively shown to users to build trust and save the need for a report.
Potential duplicate reports are suggested to users, with the option to subscribe to the existing report if it is the same problem.
Report-makers can select specific assets on the map, such as drains or street lights, which are displayed via an asset layer shared from Causeway Alloy and help to increase accuracy.
Potential duplicate reports are suggested to users, with the option to subscribe to the existing report if it is the same problem.
“In a short few clicks, people can easily alert the council to an issue and receive an update once it’s been resolved.”
— Glen Sanderson, Leader of Northumberland County Council
Detailed responses to reports
It was essential to Northumberland that their new reporting service enabled them to close the feedback loop and better manage expectations around highways services, as Paul stressed in his presentation to the Communities and Place Scrutiny Committee:
“Previously there was no feedback. It went into a void and you never heard anything. [Now] you’re able to track it.”
FixMyStreet Pro enabled Northumberland to set up tailored responses to different types of problems, explaining what’s happening — and if nothing can happen, why.
This means the council can now automatically acknowledge each and every report with relevant information, all of which is then visible to the public via the map. In the case of the high-demand highways drainage issues, this also helped to demonstrate the council’s 92% resolution rate, showing communities what’s being done.
As with all authorities using FixMyStreet Pro, Northumberland has been able to analyse which status updates work best, and continues to iterate to improve the reporting experience and plug information gaps, as Paul acknowledged:
“We are trying to constantly improve the information that goes back and the feedback to the members of the public”
Status updates, including photos to show when jobs are complete, are shared from Alloy and sent automatically to the report-maker as well as to anyone else subscribed to the report.
Avoiding the avoidable
Of course, prevention is always better than cure, and FixMyStreet Pro played a key role in helping Northumberland to reduce avoidable contact while dealing with extreme demand.
Messages can be displayed on FixMyStreet Pro at various points across the service, including on the homepage and within the reporting workflow. These can be anything from diverting genuine emergencies away from FixMyStreet Pro, to explaining the intervention criteria for individual problems to ensure people only report those that can be addressed.
Northumberland was also able to reduce instances of reports of problems relating to roads or individual assets that fell outside of its responsibility.
Sticking with the flooding example, any reports within a highways drainage category where the map pin was dropped (whether via GPS or manually by the user inputting an address) on a road managed by National Highways were automatically diverted at no extra effort from the report-maker or the council.
Meanwhile, for reports of flooding on private land, Northumberland was able to display a message advising the report-maker that the issue could not be responded to by them – all helping to reduce avoidable demand on the service.
Detailed information can be shared at various points throughout the report workflow to help manage expectations and improve experiences.
Status updates, including photos to show when jobs are complete, are shared from Alloy and sent automatically to the report-maker as well as to anyone else subscribed to the report.Detailed information can be shared at various points throughout the report workflow to help manage expectations and improve experiences.
On the horizon
While this case study has mostly focused on Northumberland’s use of FixMyStreet Pro for highways drainage issues, it’s been great to see the council use the technology to improve reporting for other issues.
From displaying asset layers to represent grass areas that can be cut by the council, to collecting extra information from report-makers where appropriate and helpful to the response teams, Northumberland has undoubtedly hit the ground running with FixMyStreet Pro.
As Northumberland continues to adapt and iterate its use of FixMyStreet Pro, future plans include putting the council’s cyclical maintenance schedules on the map to further reduce avoidable contact and further refining workflows to help extract more useful triage information from report-makers at the point of reporting.
In the meantime, we love working with the dedicated team at Northumberland and look forward to seeing where they take the technology next.
Northumberland makes use of asset layers to display where certain reports can be made, and uses extra questions and forms to collect necessary information up-front.
Image credits with thanks:
A Northumberland road by johndal on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
