Why the LGA is wrong to encourage RAC Apps - Chris Faires

This week saw the re-launch for an App that is intended to make it easier for motorists to report potholes and other 'nuisance' issues.

The RAC App is make by Streetrepairs, a website to channel road faults to local authorities.

It is one of a number of sites setup to ‘help the motorist’ such as fixmystreet and mr-pothole.co.uk- the latter has created streetrepairs. But does it really help get problems solved?

On the surface, streetrepairs and fixmystreet have shiny google maps for people to locate the issue and a menu of faults like ‘pothole’ or ‘fly-tipping’. They put in their details and go “sent to your local authority three minutes later”.

It’s as easy as pie. A smooth customer journey. Isn’t it?

Firstly, the idea that local authorities can act quickly from these systems are misleading. I tested this with two similar issues: one from Hertfordshire County Council’s Highways fault reporting system and another from fixmystreet. The one from our system was 24 hours quicker.

This is because third-party sites go into an email queue to be re-interpreted by the authority into their system and process- a duplication of effort. This costs Councils money. We estimate that for every 23 reports from third-party sites we could repair 2 potholes.

Secondly, streetrepairs talks up that faults are visualised on the map and that these reduce duplicates. This only works if all the faults are in one place- in Hertfordshire that is our site. These sites also track responses in a limited way- fillthathole.org.uk has a list of current faults that is woefully inaccurate as we have responded

I am aware of the open 311 protocols which mean that third-party sites can universally talk to authorities systems directly. Trouble is, not all authorities are universal. For example, Hertfordshire’s fault reporting system takes potholes and street light issues but in Norfolk these are run as separate contracts. There is also a mind-boggling list of agency agreements over issues that people complain about like grass-cutting. Life in a local authority is complicated, that is the reality, but third party sites only give the illusion of simplicity.

Our system also asks questions to distribute the fault to the right team. So we ask how deep a pothole is and the system looks at where it is- so a deep pothole on an A road will go to a responsive works team, but that team will not go to some cracked surface reported on a residential street. Third party sites have a very limited list of faults to choose from. We don't want to know a 'street lighting issue'- we want to know if the light is out or has exposed wiring- this affects who responds and are different faults.

Essex is another good example of bespoke Highways design. The site will tell you if the road is private and in that case Essex do not maintain it. Fixmystreet would send a pothole on the M25 to us (but it should be the Highways Agency)

That is not to say that there is work to do for local authorities. Fault reporting systems need to be responsive to user needs and need to do more to link problems like potholes with planned works regimes. Authorities need to do more to explain what they can do and what they cannot do with limited budgets and competing requests better. There is not always time to undertake content analysis for significant volumes of faults.

It is disappointing that the LGA has commented in favour of these websites as they cause local authorities more headaches and more work.The LGA should be working to improve standards and good practice across authorities and not to promote Apps which provide disbenefits for its members.