Fix My Street!

Councillors often claim to have fixed things in their ward. For the Lib Dems, it frequently forms the main part of their case for electing them (One Councillor I can think of claims to be very active in fixing street lights – I have a vaguely amusing mental picture of the person in question in overalls, climbing ladders with their toolkit).

Of course they don’t mean that – they have merely asked the Council to fix something, and usually it is fixed. Councillors clearly should help getting things fixed in this way, and we will be talking about things fixed in the Coleridge thanks to our chasing up of the Council (and those where the Council is still letting Coleridge down!)

But Councillors should really only need to get involved in these issues when local residents have tried and failed to get action from the Council. Help, however, is at hand. There is a really great website (www.fixmystreet.com) that allows anyone to report a problem on a map, upload a photo if necessary, and an email is automatically sent to the relevant Council to fix the problem.

The best bit is that others can then see that a problem has been reported and the Council notified, or if not, notify the problem themselves. If you spot any local problems – defective paving, graffiti, litter/rubbish, streetlighting faults etc etc, I suggest first using this website, then get in touch if the Council isn’t helping fast enough.