Fix my street
This is rather wonderful. Fix My Street is a new-ish project from the boys at My Society who brought us Write to Them and They Work For You. When I heard about it, I subscribed to the feed to hear about problems being reported in my ward, and promptly forgot about it.
This Thursday morning, the pedestrian lights went down at the corner of Cornwallis Road and Henley Avenue. A man called David Sheldon reported it on the site and the site emailed the county council four minutes later to tell them. Someone called Ray Taylor later fed back that they were working again. Doubt it was the service that prodded the council into action, as the lights were back up again in an hour or so, but I really like that the web is being used like this, and think there’s real potential for this service to become a way to report problems in the neighbourhood.
Interesting to see the ‘They Work for you People’ doing this, and fair play to them. Your entry seem to suggest Oxfordshire County Council has no online system itself for picking up this kind of thing, and that’s what creates the need for this ‘middle man’. Are they still in the IT dark ages?
Lancashire County Council, for example, has its own well developed system - see http://www3.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/atoz/a_to_z/dirServices.asp?u_id=1345&strSL=P
But then it’s a Labour council, so maybe it’s just further ahead.
No - Oxfordshire CC does have a similar facility:
http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/wps/portal/publicsite/doitonline/reportitonline/forms
…but personally I prefer the idea of the fixmystreet one as others can see (and RSS feed as I have) the complaints and see when they were fixed or not and comment on them. It’s better for holding them to account - in the same vein as theyworkfor you.