COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, April 14, 2014

QUESTION NO.11

QUESTION: Councillor G. O'Connell

To ask the Manager for an update report on the working of "fixYourStreet.ie" to include in the answer the average time line within which action is taken by this council following a report, if the commitment to "take action within two working days" and that "the response available through the website will always be given by an official of the relevant council" is adhered to by this council or does it represent unfair advertising.  Many people complain that they never hear what happens their complaint, they do not get an acknowledgement and most times nothing else happens either and the problem or issue persists un-attended?

REPLY:

Launched by South Dublin County Council in August 2011, the Fix Your Street online service was rolled out to all local authorities nationally during 2012. South Dublin County Council was the lead authority in this process and by 2013 the service was fully operational in every council.

There has been a good take up of the service by the public and a total of 9,791 reports were received in 2013.  As can be seen from the table below, Litter and Illegal Dumping was the most reported category nationally at 45% of the reports with Road or Path Defects in second place at 24%.

Of the 9791 reports received in 2013, South Dublin County Council received 2843 reports, by far the largest number, most probably owing to the lead role we have played in its promotion and development.  The average response time for South Dublin was 1.68 days. Unfortunately the number of reports took longer than two days to be replied to in 2013 is not readily available, but this is constantly monitored and acted on where concerns arise and we are satisfied that it relates to a small number of queries. For example, at the time of writing this reply, over the previous 30 days there were 253 reports of which 249 have been answered, 4 are currently unanswered and 1 may be over the 2 day limit.

The commitment that "the response available through the website will always be given by an official of the relevant council" is adhered to by every local authority. In South Dublin this response will be given by an SDCC Customer Care Agent. Due to the scheduling of works programmes, the work required may be carried out at a later date. In these cases a commitment date is recorded on the system and a further update will issue on or before that date advising of the scheduling of the work programme.

At present no acknowledgement is issued via email and updates are to be found only by the customer re-visiting the website. The site is in 'beta', which means it is under continual improvement and development. One such planned enhancement in the next update of the 'fixyourstreet.ie' site is that an acknowledgement system will be implemented whereby all reports that are accompanied by an email address submitted by a customer will automatically be acknowledged via an email reply.