COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, November 09, 2015

QUESTION NO.2

QUESTION: Councillor P. Foley

I have receive a number of complaints regarding the Fix my street application and more specifically the fact that after a query is submitted, automated responses are received and no other contact or follow up takes place.

The success of Fix my street will depend on consumer confidence and if people are only getting automated responses they will stop using it.

Can statistics be provided to show usage of the system and the level of responses - and not just the automated response - given to users of Fix my street.

REPLY:

The service run by South Dublin County Council on behalf of all local authorities is fixyourstreet.ie - not to be confused with a website independently run and known as fixmystreet.ie - the latter which local authorities have no involvement in or control of.  While reports which are logged on the fixmystreet.ie website are uploaded into our website fixyourstreet.ie, the responses which the Council issue are published to fixyourstreet.ie and as far as we are aware are not accessed by the fixmystreet service.  Again, as far as we are aware, comments made on the fixmystreet site don't get uploaded into our website - fixyourstreet.ie

The Council does not issue automated replies in response to fixyourstreet.ie reports - except in the case of water and drainage related reports which are now dealt with through the mechanisms established with Irish Water.  fixyourstreet.ie will respond to water and drainage reports issuing a standard response to indicate to the user of the service that Irish Water are now responsible for these matters and to indicate that the report has been forwarded to them.  Irish water should subsequently issue their own response via the fixyourstreet website using the facilities which we have provided for them. 

Given the nature of what is being responded to, many reports will require a standard initial response informing the user of the service what will happen to their report - it may be that an inspection is required and that the matter has been referred to the litter warden, services engineer, or other appropriate person for further investigation.  However this response is not automated or issued by a computer.  Staff will have issued this response as identified in the response itself (Customer Care Agent Environment, etc..) This is consistent with the commitment entered into by the government where in the programme for government it states "In local services, we will establish a website – www.fixmystreet.ie – to assist residents in reporting problems with street lighting, drainage, graffiti, waste collection and road and path maintenance in their neighbourhoods, with a guarantee that local officials will respond within two working days". The development of fixyourstreet.ie is in response to this.

In terms of available statistical analysis of Fix Your Street for South Dublin County Council, the following details a summary for 2015;

Fix Your Street - Year to date to 28th October, 2015.

South Dublin County Council have received a total of 3,037 reports - of which we have responded to 3,020. The average time to respond to those 3,020 reports (rounded to 2 decimal places) has been 1.07 working days. Currently there are 17 unanswered reports of which 12 of them have been more than 2 working days unanswered.

Category	# Reports Answered	Avg Time to Respond in days	# Unanswered
Graffiti	176	0.82	1
Leaks and Drainage	100	0.21	0
Litter and Illegal Dumping	769	0.85	4
Road or path defects	571	2.34	3
Street Lighting	951	0.83	5
Tree and Grass Maintenance	453	0.61	4