Blog posts about news

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. 

G-Cloud 13 is live at long last, and we’re really pleased to have our two newest products for local government and the public sector joining our offering on the framework.

Buyers can now procure the following SocietyWorks products on G-Cloud 13, via the Crown Commercial Service’s Public Procurement Gateway:

FixMyStreet Pro

Reliable, integrated, map-based street, highway and environment fault reporting for councils, local government bodies and highways agencies, based on FixMyStreet, the UK’s most popular reporting service for citizens.

WasteWorks

Designed with Bromley Council, WasteWorks is a user-centred, front-end domestic waste service that integrates with in-cab systems. Citizens can check bin days, report missed bins, order containers, pay for green or bulky collections and pay for repeat bin collection subscriptions.

FOIWorks

Our open-source, integrated, user-needs focused front-end solution for taking Freedom of Information requests from citizens, developed with Hackney Council and informed by our years of experience running WhatDoTheyKnow.

ApplyWorks

Easy and secure location based applications and payment services for citizens, businesses and councils. Built to GOV.UK design standards, integrated with all line of business systems and equipped with a comprehensive application management system.

If it’s our service discovery and consultancy services you’re looking for, those are available via Digital Outcomes & Specialists 5, and will be listed on the Digital Outcomes 6 framework when it is launched.

For buyers that would prefer not to procure through a framework, or would like a longer contract than G-Cloud 13 will allow, we have a direct call-off contract available for each of our products and services. Please contact us for more information.

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Image: Poodar Chu

There’s an updated call-off contract available for each of SocietyWorks’ products and services for local government and the public sector. 

The contract will be of particular interest to customers wanting to purchase a product directly instead of procuring via a framework, or those wishing to agree longer term contracts than some frameworks, like the Digital Marketplace, allow. 

It should also help customers to access newer products that launch before a framework has been updated, especially in instances where framework updates are delayed. 

For those still wanting to procure via a framework, our products and services continue to be available for procurement via the Digital Marketplace, and various other supplier platforms. 

WasteWorks and ApplyWorks will join FixMyStreet Pro and FOIWorks on G-Cloud 13 when it is launched in November. Until then, the latter two are available via G-Cloud 12.

Meanwhile, our service discovery and consultancy services are available via Digital Outcomes & Specialists 5, and will be listed on the Digital Outcomes 6 framework when it is launched (date still TBC).

Customers wanting to take advantage of the updated call-off contract can contact us here. If you’re an existing customer and would like to purchase via direct award from now on, please speak to your account manager. 

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Image: Carlos Alberto Gómez Iñiguez

We’re thrilled to be introducing a new product for councils into our suite of citizen-centred digital services: ApplyWorks will provide a user-friendly front-end workflow for taking online applications and payments for a variety of residential and business purposes.

From dropped kerbs and H-bar markings to trading licences, taxi licensing and skip hire ApplyWorks will adapt to whatever combination of service areas a council requires, while providing the same easy and intuitive user experience for applicants, and for customer services making applications on their behalf.

Like all of SocietyWorks’ cloud-based products, ApplyWorks will enable integration with councils’ existing systems to streamline the application experience and close feedback loops. In this case, it will be payment providers and CRM systems, such as Confirm, Civica Pay and Worldpay. 

Using our smart geo-location technology and in-application prompts, ApplyWorks will help people to make more accurate and comprehensive applications. 

Specialised licensing features will be available for more complex service areas such as market trader pitches and taxi licensing. These features include asset layers, calendars and attendance registers.

ApplyWorks will be launching later on this year. If you would like more information or to get involved with the development process, please drop us a message.

The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames has chosen SocietyWorks’ self-service waste portal WasteWorks, for managing resident access to waste online more efficiently and transparently, starting with garden waste and looking ahead to incorporate wider domestic waste services.

Residents of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames will now be able to access the council’s garden waste services via a dedicated version of SocietyWorks’ new online waste portal WasteWorks, which was launched in 2021 in collaboration with Bromley Council and Veolia. Using the portal, residents will be able to view their garden waste subscriptions, order new containers and use one-off card payments for non recurring subscriptions, all within the same workflow. There will soon be a Direct Debit function for residents to use for recurring subscriptions, too. While initially focused on improving the resident experience for garden waste, plans are in place to roll WasteWorks out to manage the council’s wider domestic waste service transactions. 

Optimised to work on whatever device residents want to use, WasteWorks will enable the Council to provide a more convenient and seamless online experience for residents thanks to integration with the council’s in-cab system provided by Veolia Echo and payment provider Capita. WasteWorks will also help to deliver a more transparent waste service by enabling a two-way flow of information to keep residents informed on the status of their waste subscriptions, payments, reports and requests. Customer services will be able to use the same user-centred workflow to manage waste subscriptions on behalf of residents over the phone.

The introduction of WasteWorks, which was recently shortlisted for a LGC Award 2022 in conjunction with Bromley Council, is a joint venture between the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and the London Borough of Sutton, whose own dedicated version of the portal is currently in development. This comes as part of the ongoing improvements being established by the South London Waste Partnership, of which both Kingston and Sutton are members. The two councils approached SocietyWorks to help further digitise their existing online domestic waste system and move towards a consistent approach to online waste services across the boroughs, which will also benefit their shared waste provider Veolia by improving communication between its in-cab system, the councils and residents.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “We’re delighted to be helping the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames bring its online waste system in line with resident expectations. It’s always a pleasure to work with councils that not only put resident needs first, but also work very collaboratively with neighbouring councils and their other external partners to deliver more wide-reaching improvements. We look forward to helping more councils across the UK do the same.” 

Councillor John Sweeney, Portfolio Holder for Business, Recycling and Customer Contact added: “We are excited to be one of the first boroughs to use this innovative system. This new online portal will allow residents to more easily keep track of their subscription payments. It is great to know that this system has been developed with another London council and we look forward to rolling it out across the borough.”

Scott Edgell, General Manager, Veolia SLWP said: “Our teams work hard to serve over 70,000 Kingston households with recycling and waste collections, including 14,000 signed up to the garden waste collection service. We’re so pleased to be supporting Kingston Council with the implementation of their new waste portal with the help of SocietyWorks, so that the high quality service we strive to deliver to residents is reflected in a better experience online, and look forward to the platform’s development in Sutton.”

Take a look at The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames’ new green waste system or contact us to discuss how WasteWorks could work for your authority.

Peabody Housing Association joins Transport for London and seven borough councils in using FixMyStreet Pro to provide an easy way for people to report local problems and improve satisfaction.

Residents living in Thamesmead, London will now be able to report local environmental issues such as fly-tipping, pest control, public lighting and problems in or around the canals and lakes to Peabody using a new dedicated online system powered by SocietyWorks’ FixMyStreet Pro. 

FixMyStreet Pro’s technology allows residents to pinpoint a problem’s location and report it within a matter of minutes via their mobile phones. The reports, which will be sent directly to Peabody’s dedicated environmental services team in Thamesmead, aim to enable the housing association to deliver a more efficient and effective service to local residents, working in tandem with the neighbouring boroughs of Bexley and Greenwich, both of which also use FixMyStreet Pro to manage reports from residents.

Peabody, one of London’s largest and oldest housing associations, owns around 65% of the land in Thamesmead and is leading on the 30-year regeneration of the neighbourhood. This will create around 20,000 new homes; thousands of new jobs; a wealth of leisure, cultural and commercial facilities; improved green spaces and waterways; and better connections with London and the South East. Alongside its long-term plans for Thamesmead, Peabody is delivering ongoing improvements across the neighbourhood to enhance the day-to-day experiences of residents. FixMyStreet Pro is yet another step forward in achieving this. 

John Lewis, Executive Director of Peabody, said: “Getting the basics right for residents is a key priority for us all at Peabody. This means providing an effective repairs and maintenance service, investing more in our existing homes, and providing simple and easy access to our services through technology that’s quick and easy to use. It also means delivering services that best meet the needs of local communities.

“FixMyStreet Pro is an excellent example of how we can offer a modern and responsive environmental maintenance service to Thamesmead residents. It’s great to be launching it here, and I look forward to hearing resident feedback about it over the months ahead.”

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “This is a huge step forward for the residents of Thamesmead, who can now benefit from a truly joined-up reporting system for local problems. With Peabody and its two closest borough councils, Bexley and Greenwich, all using FixMyStreet Pro, the three bodies can work in synchronisation, making it easier than ever for residents to successfully report problems and care for their local community. We hope to help other areas of the UK achieve the same kind of progress.”

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If you’d like to explore how FixMyStreet Pro could work for you, find out more here.

We are delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted for the Public/Private Partnership award at the LGC Awards 2022 for the work we completed with the London Borough of Bromley to develop a new, self-service digital domestic and green waste service.

The service, WasteWorks, is a secure, user-centred and fully integrated front-end system, designed to meet rising resident expectations for on-demand, self-service access to waste, while also helping councils to reduce costs and improve customer communications.

Within just a few months of launching WasteWorks, Bromley Council was seeing a 40% drop in avoidable customer contacts thanks to the system’s functionality to provide clear, citizen-friendly response templates that can be adjusted in real-time.

The council was also able to realise a long held ambition to provide an integrated Direct Debit option for payments for Green Waste services. Despite only being available for a short time, Direct Debits already account for a quarter of all transactions and are greatly reducing time and resources in issuing and processing renewal correspondence.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “We are incredibly proud of the partnership we have built with Bromley Council over the last ten years. Bromley’s dedicated team shares our desire to improve the accessibility and transparency of digital council services, and this is reflected in the scalable, user-centred solutions we produce together and their positive impact on residents and staff.

“We are thrilled to be shortlisted for this award and to celebrate the cohesion and trust between our teams, as well as the hard work that went into the creation of WasteWorks over the last twelve months, especially during a time when waste services have never been more important or under pressure.” 

Find out more about WasteWorks here.

Our new report Citizen reporting in the UK 2022, which explores whether and how citizens make reports about problems in their local area, has been published. 

Based on a nationwide YouGov survey commissioned by SocietyWorks, the report aims to help councils and other public sector organisations that need to take reports from citizens about a variety of issues to stay informed of ever-changing expectations. 

Among some of our key findings, we discovered that the majority of citizens surveyed said they haven’t reported a problem in the last few years due to experiencing previous disappointment caused by unresolved reports. 

We also learned that only 22% of respondents wanted a dedicated mobile app for making reports, while 43% would prefer a website that works well on mobile devices.

Alex Parsons, senior researcher at our parent charity mySociety, with whom we collaborated on this research, said: ‘Citizen reports of problems both help citizens feel guardianship over their area, and alert authorities to problems. Managing the feedback loop and the expectations of citizens is important because problems being reported and not fixed makes citizens less likely to report again. 

‘The philosophy of our services is that citizens should not need to understand how overlapping systems of government work to report problems, and this is validated by strong support for a tool that can route the request to the right place. 

‘Making it easy to report problems and keep citizens informed about progress improves the relationship between local councils and citizens and means citizens don’t need to follow-up through other methods.’ 

Councils that are keen to transform their service delivery for citizens can carry some key priorities forward from this research to help them harness the full potential of proactive citizen-made reports, without increasing the burden on customer services teams.

Read the full report, Citizen reporting in the UK 2022, here.

Merton Council has joined a growing number of London boroughs using SocietyWorks’ FixMyStreet Pro service to process reports from residents about local environment issues.

Londoners living in the borough of Merton can now make reports about environment issues such as fly-tipping and graffiti via the council’s newly launched FixMyStreet Pro service. Developed by SocietyWorks, the subsidiary of civic technology charity mySociety, FixMyStreet Pro is focused on helping citizens be active members of their community by making it easy to report problems and closing the feedback loop between council and resident.

FixMyStreet is an extremely user-friendly platform, and it will make it even easier for our residents to play their part.

Councillor Natasha Irons, Merton’s Cabinet Member for Local Environment and Green Spaces

Merton Council is one of several London authorities to use FixMyStreet Pro and benefit from its intelligent functionality to handle the complex routing of inbound street and environment reports, automatically ensuring everything goes to the correct place, including being able to divert reports to Transport for London where relevant. With integration into Merton’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM system, FixMyStreet Pro acts as the user-friendly front door to environment reports, with a simple, fully-optimised interface that works perfectly on any device and facilitates a two-way flow of data so that report-makers can stay up to date with the progress of their reports.

Councillor Natasha Irons, Merton’s Cabinet Member for Local Environment and Green Spaces: “Merton is a great place to live, work and visit but, like all London boroughs, we’re seeing too many people abusing our public spaces with environmental crimes like fly-tipping and littering. We want everyone to take care and pride in their neighbourhoods and behave considerately, so that everyone can enjoy our great borough. FixMyStreet is an extremely user-friendly platform, and it will make it even easier for our residents to play their part.”

Mark Cridge, Chief Executive at SocietyWorks said: “FixMyStreet Pro provides London councils with a key opportunity to join a community of authorities and other agencies delivering a truly efficient and joined-up service. We’re delighted to welcome Merton into the FixMyStreet family, and we’re excited to continue working together to build a stronger, more active community.”

FixMyStreet Pro is now up and running in Merton. Residents can use the service to report local environment issues. 

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Want to explore how FixMyStreet Pro could work for you? Request a demo with the SocietyWorks team here.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of a brand new series of webinars for local authorities all about getting online citizen-facing services for the public realm right for you and for your residents.

After over a decade designing citizen-centric services with councils, this webinar series has been brewing for a while, and we’re pleased to have arrived at the right time to make it happen and more widely share the many lessons we’ve learned along the way, at every stage of process – from discovery to implementation and beyond. 

The series will take the form of regular, hour-long virtual events that will bring together experts from within SocietyWorks and the mySociety team, along with special guest speakers from across local government and the wider sector. Each webinar, we’ll hone in on a different aspect of public realm service design and delivery, discussing real-life experiences and sharing best practices.

And where better to start than at the beginning? 

For the first webinar, our Designer and User Researcher Martin Wright will be sharing his advice on where to start when it comes to building or redesigning a service for citizens. With help from some special guests, he’ll be discussing how to balance council and resident requirements, why consequence scanning is a must and ways you can encourage positive resident uptake.

Scoping out a successful citizen service: how to get started will take place in July. Find out more and register your free place. 

Get involved

Do you have a story to tell or some advice to share about how local authorities can perfect public realm online services? We’d love to have you as a guest speaker – tell us more here.