Report Problems To Your Council

Reading Council are testing a new app called ‘Love Clean Reading’. For those who live outside Reading, or if you dont know which council to contact, use this.

http://www.fixmystreet.com/.

"Its a quick and easy way for residents to help the Council keep their local neighbourhood clean by taking photos of litter, fly tipping, dog mess or graffiti they come across. All they have to do is take a picture and then use the downloaded app on their smartphone or tablet to send it directly to the Council’s Steertcare Team."

The text below is from http://redlandslabour.org.uk/?p=1173

"The Streetcare Team will then send the member of public confirmation of receipt and – when it has been attended to – a photograph of the cleaned up area.

Last year’s ‘We Need to Talk’ public consultation highlighted the great importance people in Reading placed on clean environments. The Council will this week be writing to the people who last year completed a ‘We Need to Talk’ questionnaire last year, who have supported their local Neighbourhood Action Group in the past and Reading Councillors, to help trial the ‘app’ over a six month period.

The idea is to gather any public feedback from the trial, improve it where necessary and then roll it out to all Reading residents to use.

Thanks to GPS technology, the ‘Love Clean Reading’ app is able to identify the exact location of the problem and alerts the relevant team at Reading Borough Council. There is no need for the person to dig around for a telephone number or make a phone call as all the information the council needs is contained in the report.

In some cases that would mean Streetcare officers clearing up the mess, before taking a photo of that work and posting it on the website at http://loveclean.reading.gov.uk In other cases – where the flytipping was on private land for example – the Council would report that back and explain that it had contacted the private owners to clear up the mess.

Around 1,500 of the 25,000 phonecalls calls made to Reading Borough Council’s call centre every month are to do with things like graffiti, fly-tipping, abandoned vehicles, this ‘app’ is an extra reporting mechanism for local residents. Where possible the Streetcare Team will take swift action and where it cannot, we will say why.

The ‘Love Clean Streets’ app, which was originally pioneered at Lewisham Council, in partnership with Keep Britain Tidy, back in 2007 and research showed it helps to cut the processing time of a report by up to 87% and are far more accurate than those received by phone. Complaints about graffiti in Lewisham, South London, fell by more than 30% in the first two years of the app being used, with customer satisfaction with the Council’s street cleaning services increasing at the same time. It is now used by local authorities across the capital.

You can download the free App (Iphone, Blackberry, Android or Windows 7) from the Love Clean Reading website http://loveclean.reading.gov.uk or from an App Store."