Blog posts about Case studies

With more decisions on Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) announced, councils across the UK are going to need to navigate some complex adjustments of responsibilities as they assume different structures. 

Even for those not directly affected by LGR, any change taking place in neighbouring boroughs could have an impact, such as boundary changes making it harder for members of the public to know who’s responsible for an issue.

At SocietyWorks, we’ve been helping councils through various structural transitions with our technology for over 20 years, and have already been supporting some of our clients through changes associated with LGR. 

Take a look at some of the ways we’ve been doing this…

Keeping the front-end simple and consistent 

While LGR is a big topic among the public sector, nearly two thirds of the public are not engaged with what is happening. Regardless of how much change is afoot, members of the public will still want to do things like check when their bin is being collected, submit an application for a skip licence or tell the council about a pothole — quickly, easily and without confusion.

During Northamptonshire County Council’s unitary transition into North Northamptonshire Council and West Northamptonshire Council, we helped to keep the reporting of local street and highway defects simple. We did this by running a combined service capable of triaging between the two new councils until each was ready to launch their own instance of the service, each of which is still capable of ensuring reports go to the right place across the county and beyond its borders.

Absorbing and redistributing responsibilities

Where reorganisation involves redistributing responsibilities, 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 its town and parish 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.

Our new FixMyStreet for Parish & Town Councils offering builds on this work, giving the smallest of councils the ability to define which types of street issue they are responsible for, and then receive email notifications when local residents report issues in those categories via FixMyStreet.

Meanwhile, for other authorities needing to change the types of reports they receive or alter the services they offer, our flexible solutions are designed to accommodate this — whether it’s as simple as adding new categories for public realm fault reporting or as intensive as incorporating whole new waste services into the council’s remit. 

Bridging gaps and smoothing switchovers

The interoperability of our solutions ensures that our council clients can make whatever changes are required behind the scenes, enabling you to 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 consistent and predictable.

A considered approach to change

LGR represents a moment of real change for councils and, critically, the people they serve. While this scale of change won’t be without its challenges, where councils make use of technology that can accommodate individual needs, disruption can be kept to a minimum.

We know how to support councils to achieve sustainable digital transitions that create impactful transformation in public service delivery. If you would like some help navigating LGR through citizen-centred technology, get in touch with us and we’ll  do our best to help. 

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Image: Nicolas Postiglioni on Pexels

Oxfordshire County Council has been using FixMyStreet Pro to handle reports of local street and highway issues since 2016. 

After letting the service embed for a couple of years, the council launched a volunteer highways reporting scheme as part of the Oxfordshire Together programme. The initiative was designed to increase community involvement in highways maintenance by enabling trained volunteers, known as “super users”, to identify and report qualifying highway defects through FixMyStreet.

Speaking about the scheme in June 2026 at one of our FixMyStreet Pro User Groups, Oxfordshire’s Senior System Officer, Antonia Pavalache, shared a case study on how using a community-centric and flexible tool like FixMyStreet Pro has enabled the council to more efficiently identify and address highways issues while fostering greater community ownership and engagement.

The challenge

Oxfordshire’s highways team recognised a growing desire among residents and councillors to become more involved in maintaining and improving their local areas. 

While the council already benefited from the sense of community and transparency created by displaying all existing reports publicly on the FixMyStreet map, Antonia explains how Oxfordshire wanted to go a step further and create a more structured approach that would:

• Improve visibility of local highway issues
• Harness residents’ knowledge of their communities
• Support highways maintenance teams with additional “on the ground” intelligence
• Strengthen relationships between the council and local communities
• Increase coverage across the county without significantly increasing operational resources

The council also wanted to better understand community priorities and ensure local concerns were reflected in maintenance activity.

The solution

Taking advantage of FixMyStreet Pro’s ability to create unlimited user accounts, with as many different permissions as is required, Oxfordshire put together a volunteer-led FixMyStreet Super User Scheme that enables trained community members to identify and report highways defects using FixMyStreet. 

Dedicated accounts, created for Oxfordshire,  give trained volunteers a slightly higher level of permissions when reporting problems through FixMyStreet. For example, they can include specific details surplus to those asked of a standard user, such as the exact depth of a pothole, which can help to fast-track more urgent problems.

The model creates a direct route from local observation through to the council’s maintenance processes, ensuring that issues identified by volunteers can be assessed and actioned efficiently. 

“Local knowledge does make a huge difference.”

Recruitment and training

Oxfordshire’s volunteers are primarily recruited through its local town and parish councils, helping the scheme reach individuals who are already active within their communities.

The onboarding process includes:

Initial training

• One-hour online training session
• Delivered with support from highway inspectors
• Covers defect identification, reporting requirements, and scheme scope
• Explains the difference between reportable safety defects and issues requiring immediate intervention

Practical support

• Follow-up site visits
• Hands-on guidance in identifying and reporting defects
• Ongoing access to a dedicated support team

Volunteers receive continued support throughout their participation, with regular communication channels available for questions and feedback.

How the scheme works

Oxfordshire asks its volunteer super users to focus on qualifying highway defects, including issues such as:

• Potholes
• Kerbing defects
• Vegetation-related issues
• Other predefined maintenance categories

To support accurate reporting, the reporting forms were tailored to capture additional information required by contractors, including:

• Defect dimensions
• Hazard details
• Road speed limits
• Traffic management considerations

Reports are reviewed before being passed into the council’s internal asset management system, provided by Causeway, and then forwarded to contractors for action.

The process is overseen by a dedicated volunteer support team that:

• Reviews report quality
• Maintains communication with volunteers
• Provides additional guidance where needed
• Identifies opportunities for process improvement

Results and impact

Since launching in 2019, Oxfordshire’s FixMyStreet Super User Scheme now has 230 active volunteers across the county, who submit around 1,700 defects annually.

Improved coverage

The super users provide regular monitoring of local areas, creating greater visibility of developing issues that may not be identified through scheduled inspections alone.

Examples include:

• Monitoring potholes that deteriorate between inspections
• Identifying pathway obstructions
• Highlighting defects that may require escalation
• Providing feedback on completed repairs

Community engagement

According to Antonia, the initiative has been well received by local communities, with volunteers reporting a strong sense of pride and ownership in helping improve their local areas, while councillors and residents gain greater visibility into the maintenance process.

The scheme has also strengthened communication between the council and communities by creating regular opportunities for dialogue and feedback, something that’s been especially useful while navigating internal restructures:

“Local knowledge does make a huge difference. For example, if there is a pathway obstruction, the inspector only does monthly inspections. There is no better way of identifying issues as they occur than somebody who is proactive in the community.” 

Operational benefits

The council benefits from:

• Increased local intelligence.
• Better understanding of community priorities.
• Earlier identification of defects.
• More effective use of inspector resources.
• Enhanced quality assurance through local monitoring.

Key success factors

Oxfordshire identified several factors as having contributed to the success of the programme:

• Clear role definitions and reporting boundaries
• Structured training delivered by highway professionals
• Dedicated volunteer support
• Tailored reporting workflows within FixMyStreet
• Strong communication between volunteers, inspectors and contractors
• Regular feedback and engagement opportunities

Safety and governance

The scheme operates within clearly defined safety parameters.

Volunteers are not expected to work on high-speed roads and are restricted to designated environments where participation can be managed safely.

The programme provides volunteers with meaningful involvement while ensuring responsibility for urgent and high-risk defects remains with qualified highways professionals.

Conclusion

Oxfordshire’s FixMyStreet Super User Scheme demonstrates how FixMyStreet Pro can be used as more than a public reporting tool.

By adapting the platform to support trained volunteers, the council created a structured process that extends their visibility of local issues, strengthens community engagement and improves the effectiveness of highways maintenance. 

Wishing a huge thank you to Antonia for talking to us about the scheme!

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If you’d like to learn more about FixMyStreet Pro, get in touch. 

Being a supplier of technology that sits at the frontend of public services, one of the key promises we make to our customers is that we will accommodate the need for changes made to any backend systems with which we integrate while keeping things consistent for members of the public. 

A recent example of this is the work we’ve been doing in collaboration with the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames and the London Borough of Sutton. 

Both councils use our WasteWorks solution to manage online access to residential waste services and have been navigating a migration to a new version of their integrated in-cab system Echo.

In-cab integrations

For both councils, an API integration between WasteWorks and the Selected Interventions Echo in-cab system, used by the two councils’ waste provider Veolia, facilitates a two-way flow of data from council, to supplier, to resident and back again.

This enables residents to self-serve access to real-time data in order to:

• Check their bin days; 
• Monitor whether their bin has been collected yet;
• Find out why a collection was not taken;
• Report problems with collections; 
• Request new or extra containers; 
• Pay for subscriptions to green and bulky waste collections;
• And more according to the needs of the individual council.

As we do with any new integration, we worked in partnership with the teams at each council to map out the processes needed for sharing data to and from their new versions of Echo and test them out in staging.

Taking this approach means we can ensure everything works as expected so that, upon turning one integration off and turning the new one on, residents using the councils’ branded installations of WasteWorks are unaware anything has changed.

Adaptable technology

No two councils use WasteWorks or their integrated systems in exactly the same way – even ones that are neighbours and share the same in-cab system like Kingston and Sutton.

For Kingston, the integration with its updated installation of Echo incorporates a new pricing structure for new container requests. Payments for Kingston are facilitated via their integrated payment provider Capita Pay360.

A spokesperson at Kingston Council said: “We are ambitious in our plans to further enhance waste and recycling services while advancing our green credentials.

“Kingston has the fourth highest recycling rate in London, with over 840,000 collections taking place monthly.

“We are pleased to be continuing to work alongside WasteWorks to deliver an efficient and reliable service for our residents.”

Meanwhile, Sutton’s updated integration with Echo incorporates numerous other changes including the ability for residents to report a spillage incident or the misplacement of a bin following a collection.  

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “Residential waste services require flexibility and we are very committed to providing it through WasteWorks. 

“I am proud that we have been able to support the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames and the London Borough of Sutton through this changeover period, accommodating their individual needs while maintaining business as usual standards of service for residents.”

Buckinghamshire Council has been using FixMyStreet Pro to manage inbound street, highway and environment fault reports since 2018. 

Last year we shared the news that two new integrations had been completed into Buckinghamshire’s FixMyStreet Pro service: one into Causeway’s Alloy asset management system and the other into DWF’s EvoClaim system. 

Following this, a third integration has been implemented between FixMyStreet Pro and the Abavus My Council Services (MCS) CRM system, which was introduced by Buckinghamshire for handling customer queries, such as street cleaning and other environment reports.

Integrating the MCS system with FixMyStreet Pro means residents will now be able to enjoy the same user-friendly experience when reporting street cleaning and environment problems as they do for other local issues, while staff can manage the relationship from MCS in the background.

“This project has made such a difference to our staff. It’s truly innovative and significantly enhances the ease with which people can work. The impact has been really positive.”

– Callum Lynam, Buckinghamshire Council’s Customer Improvement Manager

As with all integrations into FixMyStreet Pro, the MCS integration provides a two-way exchange of data, with changes made in one system automatically updated and reflected directly in the other.

For residents, there is no difference in the user experience when reporting an issue that will be sent to MCS or to Alloy; all of the complicated triaging is handled by FixMyStreet Pro behind the scenes. 

For more information about FixMyStreet Pro, get in touch.

With bad winter weather comes an annual spike in reports to councils and other responsible authorities about problems such as fallen trees, flooding and ever-forming potholes across the UK’s road network. 

And with climate change creating increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather events, it has never been more important to communicate transparently with the public about what is and is not possible to fix. Not only does this help to reduce expensive unnecessary contact and failure demand, it also supports the prevention of citizen disengagement through disappointment with how reports are dealt with.

Since its launch in 2012, we have introduced in collaboration with our clients numerous features to our street, highway and environmental fault reporting solution FixMyStreet Pro to help them through periods of seasonal demand. Take a look at some of them below.

Set some site-wide messaging 

Staff users have the ability to log into the FixMyStreet Pro administration dashboard and set messaging to display across their installation of the service. These messages can also be scheduled to only appear at certain times, such as out of hours.

You might want to make report-makers aware that you are receiving a high volume of reports which may delay response times, or perhaps you want to direct them to seasonal advice or policies to help them understand how you prioritise reports. 

Alternatively, you can use the site-wide messaging feature to provide emergency contact details for certain problems.

Take a look at an example from Northumberland County Council’s FixMyStreet Pro:

And another from Buckinghamshire Council’s version of the service:

Upload videos to provide extra information

As well as setting site-wide messaging, some authorities also upload videos to their FixMyStreet Pro service to give report-makers even more information about how they approach resolving local problems during periods of high demand.

For example, Buckinghamshire Council has uploaded a video to the homepage of its FixMyStreet Pro service to explain its winter maintenance priorities and manage expectations.

Meanwhile, Oxfordshire County Council uses video to illustrate its intervention criteria and ensure its residents understand what can and can’t be fixed. 

Include photos and extra questions within the report form

Another clever way to manage report-makers’ expectations is to include photos and extra questions within the FixMyStreet Pro report form to help qualify the seriousness of the problem at hand and proactively explain whether it meets your intervention criteria. 

Bath & North East Somerset Council does this for reports of blocked drains to help collect the most accurate information about the severity of the issue so that they know how to respond. 

Divert emergency reports  

During periods of high demand, it’s crucial that emergencies don’t get lost in a queue of other less urgent problems. For this reason, FixMyStreet Pro gives councils and other authorities multiple ways to communicate about and divert emergencies.

In addition to using the site-wide messaging and extra questions mentioned above, it’s also possible for staff to display emergency messaging for certain report categories, or even disable those reports entirely. 

Here’s an example of how Shropshire Council diverts reports of fuel spillages:

Edit response templates 

Expectation management doesn’t stop after reports have been submitted. FixMyStreet Pro enables staff users to set up and edit response templates to correspond to different report statuses. These responses are sent to report-makers whenever a report’s status changes to ensure they and anyone subscribed to the report is kept informed of its progress.

See an example of how Lincolnshire County Council responds to reports via its FixMyStreet Pro service, giving users a clear indication of the time-frames within which a response can be expected:

When report volume is high, authorities can edit these templates or even create new ones specifically to communicate that responses may take longer than usual, or to educate about how issues are prioritised. 

These templates can be managed from within the FixMyStreet Pro administration dashboard or they can correspond to an integrated asset management or CRM system.

 

Display scheduled works on the map

It can often be the case that members of the public go to report an issue about which you’re already aware, so when demand is already high, keeping duplication down is paramount. 

As well as suggesting possible duplicates within a customisable radius to report-makers and encouraging them to subscribe instead of re-reporting, FixMyStreet Pro also enables authorities to display on the map scheduled maintenance works to eliminate the need for reports to be made at all.

Oxfordshire County Council’s FixMyStreet Pro has special map pins dedicated to works reported and scheduled for repair by the council itself. 

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Just as no two councils are the same, no two of our FixMyStreet Pro installations are the same either. If you’re interested in learning more about FixMyStreet Pro and how it could work for you, please get in touch. 

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Image: Rob Wingate

Since FixMyStreet first launched back in 2007, we’ve always loved hearing stories from citizens about how they use the service within their local community.

Earlier this year, we heard from Lauren and John, who told us about how they’ve been using FixMyStreet to help make roads in their local area safer for blind people by reporting any pedestrian crossings with faulty or missing audio, tactile or visual indicators.

These indicators are essential for anyone with sight or hearing loss to be able to safely navigate crossing the road, so when they’re broken, it is a serious hazard. A hazard that most people probably wouldn’t notice, let alone report.

We were so inspired by their story that we asked if we could share it and encourage more people to make use of FixMyStreet in this way.

Happily, not only did they agree, but they also made a video for us! So, meet best friends Lauren and John:

John is deafblind and relies on using tactile indicators (those little plastic or metal cones beneath pedestrian crossing boxes, sometimes referred to as ‘twirlers’ or ‘spinners’) to know when it is safe to cross the road.

The pair say they started reporting any broken pedestrian crossings during lockdown as a way to make the most of their daily exercise: “We wanted to use our time to do something positive that would make journeys safer for other cane and guide dog users in the local area.

“Covid has hit visually impaired people quite hard and there have been lots of changes to street layouts, one way systems and social distancing is pretty difficult for those that cannot see.”

There are several things that Lauren and John look out for and report on FixMyStreet: “We look at all aspects of the crossing, including buttons, lights and the spinner.

“The wait light is surprisingly important because even John, who has very little remaining vision, can see if the light is on or off. If a tactile spinner isn’t working he can work out when it’s safe to cross using this light, as it will go off when the man turns green.”

That’s not all, though. Broken glass is also high up on their reporting priority list. Lauren explains, “[Glass] is a real hazard for John’s guide dog Daisy who will walk through it if there is no easy way around or if it is very small pieces she can’t see.”

Lauren says it was a local litter picking group that recommended using FixMyStreet to report all the issues she and John were finding at pedestrian crossings.

“Before finding the website I actually wouldn’t have known where or who to report the issues to.”

FixMyStreet uses the location data provided within a report to automatically send it to the correct authority. In Lauren and John’s case, it was Birmingham City Council that received their reports.

John and Lauren say using FixMyStreet has made reporting problems “easy”, and that they’ve been impressed by how quickly Birmingham City Council has responded to their FixMyStreet reports: “We have had issues fixed in less than 48 hours, which is great.”

This is something we’re very pleased to hear, and serves as a reminder of why we encourage all UK councils to give their residents the option to make reports via FixMyStreet (currently, around 2% of councils don’t accept reports from third party websites like ours).

Although lockdown will hopefully be over in the near future, John and Lauren have no plans to stop their walking and reporting routine: “Finding so many problems has motivated us to keep checking and reporting issues.

“It could be a missing button, broken light or the tactile spinner could be missing or broken. If nobody knows they are broken, then they can’t be fixed!”

Thanks so much to Lauren and John for sharing their story with us, and for being such active members of their community through FixMyStreet – this is exactly why we created the service in the first place.

Next time you’re waiting at a pedestrian crossing, why not check that everything’s working as it should, and make a quick report on FixMyStreet if it’s not?

If you want to follow more of Lauren and John’s adventures, check out their Facebook page.

How do you use FixMyStreet? Share your own story with us here.

Image: Valou_c on Unsplash

The SocietyWorks team has always been very confident in FixMyStreet Pro’s ability to create real, positive change for councils. Better user experience, more intelligent use of data, easier case management for council staff and dramatic savings – and that’s just to name a few.

But of course, the proof is always in the pudding. So we were very pleased to hear recently that, since making the switch to FixMyStreet Pro, Buckinghamshire Council has seen a significant improvement to their customer user journey when it comes to online reporting of highways defects. As a result of this, the Council has been able to create over £32,000 in savings per year.

The story so far

Buckinghamshire Council chose to make the switch to FixMyStreet Pro back in 2018 as a way to improve their street and highways fault reporting customer experience. While residents still have a choice of channels through which they can make highways reports, the Council wanted to be able to offer the most intuitive digital process possible for reports that residents want and are able to make online.

Calls to Buckinghamshire Council’s Customer Service Centre about highways defects have decreased by 49%, which equates to over £32,000 in savings per year

It didn’t take long for FixMyStreet Pro to start delivering against Buckinghamshire’s desired outcomes. Since launching the service, calls to the council about highways defects have decreased by 49% – a clear sign that the online user experience has improved. In fact, for street light defects in particular, calls have decreased by 58%, more than likely helped by the Council’s intelligent use of FixMyStreet Pro’s asset layers, which can display ID numbers for street lights (as well as a number of other assets) to help the user make an accurate selection on the map and reduce duplicate reporting.

The benefits of this improved user experience stretch beyond just the user; for the Council itself the cost per highways report has dropped by up to 98.69%, taking an average report cost down from £7.81 to just 9p. According to Buckinghamshire Council, this equates to over £32,000 in savings per year. So it’s a win for the user and for the Council – and that’s what we love to hear.

What’s next for Buckinghamshire Council and FixMyStreet Pro?

We’re so delighted that FixMyStreet Pro has had such an impact on Buckinghamshire Council already, but we’re not stopping there when it comes to improving things even further.

In light of how successfully FixMyStreet Pro has improved the user experience when it comes to reporting street faults, we’ve been looking into how we could do the same for the process of making claims, too. Buckinghamshire residents can already make claims online to the Council about highways defects, but compared to the defect reporting process, the making a claim process could be much more user-friendly for both residents and council staff. Currently, residents need to provide lots of information up-front, even before it has been established that the claim can be upheld, while staff have to copy information over from the claims form into the Council’s backend management system Confirm, which includes downloading and re-uploading attachments.

After running some service discovery sessions on this, we’ve already made some progress here by improving the connection between Buckinghamshire’s existing claims form and Confirm to drive efficiencies for officers. The next step would be to expand our integration with Confirm and allow users to be able to file an incident report within FixMyStreet itself, as well as reporting the highways defect that caused the incident.

As always, we’ll let you know how the development on this project goes, and hopefully we’ll have some more positive results to share with you in the future!

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If you’d like to find out more about FixMyStreet Pro and have an informal discussion about how the service could work for you, book a short demo here.

Image: Samantha Borges on Unsplash

2021 might not have gotten off to the easiest of starts, but one thing that will be a bit easier from now on is street reporting in Central Bedfordshire, as we welcome them into the FixMyStreet Pro fold.

For residents of the area, this means that any and all street and highways reports can now be made through the FixMyStreet website or app, or via the council’s website. Wherever a report is made, they’re all going to end up neatly in the same place, thanks to our integration with Central Bedfordshire’s backend management system, Symology Insight.  

Why Central Bedfordshire chose FixMyStreet Pro

Frustrated at finding themselves experiencing a higher volume of calls from residents over online reporting (somewhere in the region of 400 extra calls per month!), the Council was in search of a channel shift that would produce a better experience for residents and council staff alike.

While there are cheaper alternatives to FixMyStreet Pro, the savings Central Bedfordshire will now be able to make using a fully integrated system made the investment worth it. That coupled with FixMyStreet’s high-performing, user-centred interface and our years and years of experience integrating into any existing backend set-up made it the ideal solution.

“This is an exciting development for Central Bedfordshire residents as the FixMyStreet system is not only easier, faster to use, and more interactive, it can also connect with other systems to ultimately lead to smarter more efficient services.”

– Councillor Ian Dalgarno, Executive Member for Community Services

Fixing central issues

There were a number of key issues that Central Bedfordshire wanted to address through this integration with FixMyStreet Pro. 

Firstly, they wanted to improve the accuracy of their highways reports, something that FixMyStreet helps to achieve thanks to its user-friendliness, its intelligent asset layer displays and its flexible categories.

Another requirement was to remove the ability for residents to submit reports anonymously, with a view to encourage better quality reporting, easier case management and to facilitate a stronger relationship between resident and council. 

They also wanted to reduce the burden on and cost of their customer service team having to manually build reports, double key information and answer calls from residents wanting updates on their case. From now on, rather than having to call the Council for an update or needing to decipher an unfamiliar Symology Insight status code, residents will now receive clear updates on their reports automatically to the contact details they provide. Plus, our transparent approach to reporting means that anyone can view previous reports and subscribe to updates for easy progress tracking, which helps to reduce duplicates and creates a better user experience for residents and council staff alike. 

Talking about what a difference this channel shift will make to Central Bedfordshire, Councillor Ian Dalgarno, Executive Member for Community Services, said: “This is an exciting development for Central Bedfordshire residents as the FixMyStreet system is not only easier, faster to use, and more interactive, it can also connect with other systems to ultimately lead to smarter more efficient services. 

“As the new system allows users to submit reports against specific council assets, it will be a lot simpler for officers to locate and assess any problems.” 

Making new connections

We’re no stranger to integrating with Symology Insight both on premise and hosted, but as with any integration into an existing business system, it takes a lot of hard work and hiccups can happen.

In this case, we ran into an obstacle getting updates to sync from Insight. Thankfully, Central Bedfordshire and Symology were quick to jump into action and we worked together to improve our connector and enable the systems to speak to each other fluently. The end result is a seamless experience for users, who are kept in the loop as soon as their report is updated in Symology by Central Bedfordshire staff.

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Now that the button’s been pushed and the Central Bedfordshire version of FixMyStreet Pro is live, we hope it will help to make at least one part of 2021 a little bit easier to manage for the Council and its residents.

If you’re a council and you’d like to explore how SocietyWorks’ services can help you drive efficiencies and save money this year, do get in touch.

Image: Jack Bowers, Central Bedfordshire Council

After several months of exploration, iteration and all-important consequence scanning, we are very pleased to have soft-launched Hackney Council’s new noise reporting workflow.

Built in collaboration with Hackney, this has been a really interesting project to work on; delving into what form noise reports should take, how to help citizens make a noise report that’s useful to councils even if the reporter is not exactly sure where the source of the noise is and how such reports can be made as securely and sensitively as possible.

The finished product is a secure, user-friendly and highly efficient private reporting form that Hackney’s teams and its residents will be able to make use of. 

Better reporting for noise complaints

Recognising the timely need for a better frontend noise reporting system, Hackney saw the early value in making the process of submitting such a report a smoother one for residents and for council staff. That’s where we came in.

By identifying whether the noise is commercial or residential before sending it directly to the team that can deal with it, our new noise service will help to make handling noise reports much easier. Meanwhile, providing a form which enables citizens to submit a better standard of location information using UPRNs first and foremost or broader map locations if the exact source of the noise cannot be confirmed will help to deliver reports that are more accurate, actionable and faster to address. 

Aside from being able to use a form that’s designed to help them provide the correct information to councils, another bonus for Hackney residents is that they will now be able to see all of their own reports, whether noise or otherwise, all in one place when they’re logged into Hackney’s version of FixMyStreet.

A quiet place 

With the potential for noise reports to be of a more sensitive nature, it was important to us and to Hackney that we get this noise service right. That’s why as part of the service development we ran a series of consequence scanning workshops to identify and mitigate potential negative outcomes. 

As a result, each noise report that’s made to Hackney will be private and will always be dealt with by a council staff member – no automated decision making involved. This helps to ensure that, whatever the report is about, it can be dealt with appropriately without anyone other than the reporter and the council needing to know about it.

Hackney is all ears

Being a new service, we’re looking forward to seeing how Hackney gets on with using it now that it’s soft-launched and listening to residents’ noise reports.

If noise reporting is something you are also interested in, the service can either be plugged into an existing FixMyStreet Pro package, like we’ve done for Hackney, or it can be fully integrated into whichever backend management systems you are using.

Sound like something you need? Find out more and drop us a message, we’d love to hear from you.

Image: Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Residents of Nantwich, Crewe, Wilmslow, Macclesfield, and every other part of Cheshire East will benefit from the council’s decision to implement FixMyStreet Pro as their official report-making system for highways issues.

FixMyStreet’s interface should come as a step improvement for both citizens and council staff, making the reporting process much simpler for all. 

FixMyStreet Pro will be integrating with the council’s existing Confirm CRM. Confirm is a popular choice for UK councils and we’ve dealt with it a lot, so the hook-up was very straightforward.

Customer service staff will also continue taking reports over the phone. They’ll input details into the system for inspectors to pick up — and these reports will also be shown on the council’s website (and fixmystreet.com) so the public can see what’s in progress and doesn’t need re-reporting.

A further benefit is that because FixMyStreet can define the information required from the report-maker (precise location, category, etc), the customer services team won’t need to review it as they had been doing previously.

So there are efficiency wins all round for Cheshire East. We welcome them to the growing number of councils who’ve opted for FixMyStreet Pro.

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Image: Alex Liivet (CC by/2.0)