Add reporting to non-council organisations

[dracos]

For example, water leaks to water companies (share data with OFWAT?), housing associations, national parks, the Highways Agency (without having to ask the user if a road is Highways Agency or not).

• Green boxes, etc.
• Abandoned supermarket trolleys.
• TfL, Bear Scotland, etc.
• Crossrail (who emailed in Jan 2011 to ask to be added, sending contact details)
• Apparently Scotland only have one water board (Scottish Water) so this might be an easy one to start with. List of water companies websites http://www.water.org.uk/home/resources-and-links/links/water-operators
• OpenReach (poles)

[acather96]

Other bodies it masy be worth adding if this ever gets off the ground -

• National Grid (plc) - http://www.nationalgrid.com/corporate/about+us/contact+us/
• Coal Authority - http://coal.decc.gov.uk/en/coal/cms/contact/contact.aspx
• British Waterays - http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/contact-us
• English Heritage- http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/contact-us/
• Network Rail - http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/1346.aspx
• Train companies - http://www.atoc.org/train-companies (lists all 24)
• Environment Agency - http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/contactus/default.aspx
• Scottish Heritage - http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/index/contact_us.htm

[MyfanwyNixon]

Comment via Twitter giving support to inclusion of the National Grid - re: http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/284626

"Can you incorporate @nationalgriduk Both councils replied I shd phone them."

[Deborah-mySoc]

Email from user:

 Can we have the Canal and River Trust listed as the authority
 responsible for Canals and some rivers? 

 I know there are other organisations responsible for waterway
 navigations, but a good start would be for CaRT to be listed on
 your site as a point of contact for Canals and Rivers.

[Deborah-mySoc]

Linked to #35

[MyfanwyNixon]

Feedback via email (in this case relating to the Android app):

Whats the possibility of adding Water & Gas etc as people we can send reports to ? Possibly with buttons on the 1st screen to allow us to choose what type of fault we're trying to report ?

[MyfanwyNixon]

User query: "Fillthathole correctly sends defect reports to Network Rail and other identifiable authorities responsible for the road surfaces (NB the Tramways Act 1878 et seq makes the tramway operator responsible for the track + 18" where it runs on a road).

 Do you have a Network Rail listing? Other listings?

[MyfanwyNixon]

+1 for Highways Agency - Sevenoaks council wrote to say they are receiving multiple flytipping reports on the Swanley interchange, which is resposibility of the HA, not them.

[MyfanwyNixon]

Three requests for Highways Agency routing [around this time]

[MyfanwyNixon]

Is this too out of date, @TomSteinberg? https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/highways_agency_managed_roads?unfold=1

HA's response (2010) appears to include a shapefile.

[TomSteinberg]

This would now take a piece of research from @struan or @dracos to assess whether the shapefile is accurate enough for our purposes. But nice research, @MyfanwyNixon

[dracos]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH

[Gemmamysoc]

Email from user:

"Fixmystreet is great, I use it on my iPhone when I see problems, but one idea: Would be great if it was possible to report water leakages too.

Broken utility cabinets would be an other great category."

[Gemmamysoc]

Email from user:

"Would it be possible to include rivers in the drop downs as I recently tried to report some pollution in the river and put it as other but received a response that it was not their remit and was given a number to call which defeated the object."

[Gemmamysoc]

User feedback:

"Are there any plans for the FMS system to report water leakage issues directly to the approriate water utility company for the area rather than the Council? "

[MyfanwyNixon]

Comment via Facebook: "Would be REALLY good if you could add the utility services like Gas & Water too"

[abibroom]

Someone with a council email address requests we add BT and Virgin cabinets, because she gets the reports and has to pass them on.

[Gemmamysoc]

User feedback:

" think you need a river / water category which will send the report direct to the Environment Agency."

[Gemmamysoc]

User feedback:

"Hi, with a few of my posts I'm getting responses saying contact TFL. Is it possible for FMS to directly post things to TFL in the same way it posts things to local authorities?"

[Gemmamysoc]

User comment:

"I note that you do not have a category to send defect reports to Network Rail (who maintain the road surface between the stop lines on a level crossing and some other roads as well) there will also be a number of other roads which are not maintained by Councils - eg Heathrow Airport. For trunk roads Highways England and Transport Scotland have an overview but you should perhaps be listing Amey, BEAR, Carillion and other contractors who have the contracts for managing roads bridges and tunnels."

[Gemmamysoc]

User comments:

"Your site seems to be forwarding reported incidents on motorways and major A roads to the local authority rather than Highways England, requiring the local authority to forward them on. This has happened to 2 or 3 of my reports now. Highways England doesn't appear to have an easy way of reporting issues so this would be a good thing to fix on your site please"

[Fran-Uk]

Many good suggestions here. I would be interested in adapting or enhancing “FixMyStreet” to be “Fix my Leak”. Many water suppliers have poor leak reporting systems. Thames Water in particular, have a very poor leak reporting systems. Water suppliers and their watchdog may be interested in supporting such development as this could improve current inefficiencies in reporting leaks. Water suppliers are under pressure to improve leak management.

[dracos]

I guess for this to be done, the site would need to know: which water supplier was responsible for a particular point on a map (so a way of mapping point => water supplier), and contact email/information for each water supplier in order to send the report. If you are able to code, please do feel free to work on our open source codebase; if not, perhaps you could try and track down this information for any future time when someone can work on it.

[Gemmamysoc]

User feedback:

" I reported a blocked drain on your site, and it went to the County Council. They will look at it but they advised it was likely to be the water company (severn trent)'s responsibility. I found with some difficulty how to report it to Severn Trent. But it would be great if your site could also include the facility to report to utility companies. Not just blocked drains and leaks to water companies, but damaged posts and utility boxes etc to phone and electricity companies etc. Just an idea and not sure how practical it would be from your end."

[Fran-Uk]

The good news, is that water authority boundaries do not change often, and well defined. I'm looking into finding the government dataset that have these polygons. An overview (highlevel) of the boundaries is shown here.... http://www.water.org.uk/consumers/find-your-supplier . So one geo-tagged location will have little confusion as the owning water suppler for passing the incident too. The water supplier can then comment if the issue is "customer side" (e.g on private land) or on in area of road/footway/green space they are responsible for following an inspection of the incident.

[abibroom]

User question:

Do you have any plans to process faults for BT, Virgin Media, Royal Mail etc?

[MyfanwyNixon]

I want to report trainers and bicycle tyres hanging on telegraph poles to BT OpenReach via the web but they only offer telephone reporting. Can you offer this on your website?

[MyfanwyNixon]

burst water main gushing huge fountain up onto street No option on app to report?

[abibroom]

Recording a couple of user emails this week about TfL roads. In one case the council helpfully passed the report on to TfL; not sure the other did, though.

[abibroom]

Two more user emails about TfL.

[abibroom]

Is there a way to put a tick box on the reporting page to identify when a problem road is a motorway as these should be directed to Highways England

[MyfanwyNixon]

What I wonder is whether you can be more adept in identifying Transport For London roads from local roads. Several times my issues get sent to a borough although they are on a TFL road and this slows things down.

[MyfanwyNixon]

Tweet: "great app! Be good to team up with @thameswater and other water companies to report water leaks more easily."

[abibroom]

User email:

Tower Hill is a Red Route and the report should have been sent to TfL. Is there a way of changing the recipient in this type of report?

Also worth recording the follow-up from the same user, yay:

If only the TfL website was as easy to navigate as yours when fault reporting, life would be much simpler.

[abibroom]

And another one today, different person, about TfL roads.

[Di-Rex-McSigny]

Local authorities are supposed to be adding information to the NSG National Street Gazetteer validated by an organisation called geoplace. The data spec can be found here https://www.geoplace.co.uk/-/national-street-gazetteer-nsg-data-transfer-format-dtf-8-1-documents-released there is a record type 61 in the asd additional street data file which indicates which organisations have an interest in that road, path etc. It's only useful if you also have the other file as it xrefs the no's for the actual roads which are in the 1st file. Infrastructure management software providers tender to councils and utilities to provide street works management systems. Street works are then fed into Elgin's (https://www.elgin.org.uk/) public Roadworks maps https://roadworks.org/

[abibroom]

Selection of recent user emails:

Could the FixMyStreet identify utility companies responsible for an area and alert them? Or at the very least direct one to the appropriate reporting website?

According to my local council, whom I contacted via FixMyStreet, water leaks (burst pipes) should be reported straight to the water company. Would you be able to update your site to send these reports to the water company directly?

is it possible to have water utility companies added to the app so leak reports go direct rather than via highways?

[abibroom]

User email:

Could you possibly also map railways and stations onto FMS with comms to the right person at the responsible train co. or Network Rail?

[Gemmamysoc]

User emailed to say council not responsible for these: https://www.fixmystreet.com/report/1378952, so would like to see reporting to correct company added. I believe it's Openreach in this case: http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/40912/~/how-can-i-report-damage-to-bt-cables%2C-poles%2C-cabinets-or-manholes%3F

[MyfanwyNixon]

A tweet:

would be good if you enabled reporting direct to water companies?

[davea]

Another user support email asking about sending reports to Network Rail:

RAILWAYS: Also, can you please update the land owned as railway land so that we can report the often long-standing neglect of railway property direct to Network Rail and let them re-allocate it as necessary to the relevant train co? https://www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/lineside-neighbours/

[davea]

Whenever I report electricity substations as being rotting or covered in graffiti, the council says they're not liable. Please can you add a report category of 'electric substation' and send the report to those addressed at https://www.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/internet/en/help-and-advice/report-it/report-general-issue-form/

[struan]

I messaged Richmond Council about 2 weeks ago through fixmystreet about a broken water pipe outside Richmond station. They said, that this is an issue that has to be dealt with by Thames Water, rather than the council. Maybe you could add a category about broken water pipes/ water coming up through footpaths, etc and have those messages sent to water companies instead of the local councils in the future.

[MyfanwyNixon]

Tweet: Hi, would it be possible to add a category so if someone reports an abandoned trolley, it goes through to @Trolleywise so they can pick it up?

[davea]

User support request:

many people report/complain about material that has been dumped. They should be informed on the Fix My Street site that the Council's responsibilities for removing junk only apply to Council-owned property. It is up to non-Council site owners to organise the clearance of rubbish dumped. It is unfair but that is the Law.

[zarino]

User support comment:

Is the Canal and River Trust signed up to fix my street I often see problems along the sides of canals

[ludovic-tc]

An officer from a BC in the South East has got in touch because a report of a water leak was made under "other". The leak has since been fixed. +1 for incorporating water companies.

[ludovic-tc]

An FMS user got in touch last week asking to be able to report to water companies via FMS. (Also got back to say how tricky it was reporting to the relevant water company compared to using FMS.) So that's another z+1 for incorporating water companies. 🚰

[ludovic-tc]

Request from a user to be able to report fire hydrants to local Fire Services. 🔥 💧 🚒 🧑‍🚒

... could you include sending reports to regional Fire Services where it pertains to Fire Hydrants? Maybe have a separate category for them too? I tried reporting on a fire hydrant sign that needed repair, through FixMyStreet, but the report got returned to me from Birmingham Council as nothing to do with them. Later I found the below on wmfs.net page.

[ludovic-tc]

+1 for water leaks to water companies:

Can I please request that you extend your service to include water leaks. It is extremely difficult to report leaks to my local company (Welsh Water), as they insist on having a postcode and are unable/refuse to use grid references. A postcode is fine for a leak in the street outside my house, but hopeless for reporting a leak in a rural area some distance from any property that I find while walking the dog!

[MorayMySoc]

User support mail 20/6/22

Also is it possible to incorporate BT , Virgin Media and Royal Mail property onto the site map? Problem reports can then be sent directly to these organisations as often the local authority replies by saying BT , Virgin Media and Royal Mail property is not their responsibility so I should contact them directly but often their websites are labyrinthine and impossible to use.