back to article My Council Services

My Council Services is an interesting little app designed to let people conveniently report issues with public services or the immediate environment to their local council. To use the service you have to register with your name, e-mail address and mobile phone number. In the UK, your details are held by public-sector IT …

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  1. Anonymous John

    Styles or Gates.

    Stiles!

  2. The Original Ash
    Trollface

    First rule of creating a ticketing system

    Do not give the user a "Priority" option. To them, EVERY ticket is "URGENT!"

  3. Him over there

    You award the app of the week to something that is built only for UK residents? Brilliant way to stick it to Johnny Foreigner, El Reg. As a non-UK resident, this is useless to me.

    1. Silverburn
      Facepalm

      the clue is in...

      ...the .co.uk part of theregister.co.uk.

      There is plenty content on here that's specific to .ozzies and .yanks, but you don't hear us complaining about it...

      1. Darryl
        Coffee/keyboard

        "but you don't hear us complaining about it..."

        No, but we sure read about it

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is also available for Apple devices. (No idea whether it's any good or not)

    "UK - My Council Services"

  5. dotdavid
    FAIL

    App2sd

    Why no app2sd?

    Apps like this (which are used only rarely) should try and take up as little precious internal memory as possible.

    1. Anonymous John
      Unhappy

      At least it's only 1.6MB

      Not the 17MB Adobe Flash Player 11 bloatware that keeps installing itself on my HTC Desire without permission.

      1. The Original Ash
        FAIL

        Without permission?

        You can uninstall the Flash app, or set it to not automatically update. Either way, this is something you've done, not the fault of the app or the phone.

        Happy user of 10.1 (Which works with the iPlayer app).

  6. J.G.Harston Silver badge
    FAIL

    Benefits fraud isn't a council function, that's DSS, ie central government.

    1. Colin Millar

      Depends on the benefit

      Housing Benefit fraud is local council. So is social care.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This app has it's uses

    I downloaded if after reading a review in the Guardian and reported an abandoned car a few streets away that had been rusting away for over a month. My local council - Ashfield - must use the Abavus system because I was able to track the progress of my complaint through the app and sure enough the car was gone the next week. I guess if the local power-that-be don't know somethings broke they can't fix it.

  8. Number6

    Council Action

    I think most councils do act on fault reports from the public - although they do have people whose job it is to go out and check on stuff, they don't have many of them and there's a lot of roads and street lights and other bits of stuff for which they have responsibility so it may take some time before it's spotted by that means.

    I've reported faulty street lights and pot holes, which all get fixed, often within a week or two (having seen ones I didn't report go unfixed for months, I think it's reasonable to assume I had some effect). Even when a set of busy traffic lights decided to do their own thing, a report resulted in normal behaviour being restored within a day and an acknowledgement that there was indeed a glitch.

    Councils do have some level of maintenance budget and I suspect they like to use it to fix the things that people notice and complain about because it makes them look good for doing something they ought to be doing anyway.

    1. Silverburn
      Unhappy

      I'm moving to your council area...

      ...mine took 10 months to fix a seriously dangerous load of potholes on the main road to my town that appeared after this winter.

      It forced people to either ruin their cars by driving through them, or drive on the wrong side of the road - on a busy A road, that was narrow, and has a blind summit at the end of the potholes. Cycling the same road would have seen you getting sectioned for being f*ing insane.

      It attracted 85 complaints within a month of the potholes occuring, most of which deemed the potholes 'dangerous'.

      They are are now repaired, and a mere 3 weeks later, the repairs have started to fail already. Just in time for this winter...

      1. Number6

        There is a local pothole squad, I've even seen them out filling holes. Some of them only last a year, but I guess there's either an issue with the road structure with a water channel leading to subsidence, or it gets properly fixed next time they properly resurface the whole road.

        The hard part is when reporting street lights because the numbers aren't easily visible from a car when you're driving, especially if it's off at night (which are now the more noticeable ones).

        Perhaps what is required is some sort of NFC app that can read an ID transmitted by the post so you only need to get close enough. I guess a short term fix for pedestrian use would be a good barcode now that many smartphones can read them.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Nice but why App2SD=No

    I confess to not owning a zillion gibabyte internal storage android phone, but why oh why cant you install to SD card for this. It makes no sence.

  10. Greg J Preece

    Oh, I like this!

    Time to register 200 GPS-marked potholes on my street!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    It's "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgusted_of_Tunbridge_Wells

    Angry, Manchester

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: It's "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"

      It's his brother, I believe

  12. BerniS

    Pleased to see this review...

    First of all - in the interests of transparency - I want to make it clear that I am directly involved in the My Council Services Project.

    I was pleased to see this positive review of the Android version of the app. We received a similar positive review of the iPhone version via Guardian Consumer App of the Week in August this year. It is great to see the Android release getting picked up too.

    A couple of additional comments. The app is free to use for anyone who downloads it. Any submission made is automatically routed to the correct UK authority. This is based on the location of the incident reported (using the GPS capabilities of the handset and some other back end spatial checking). The details of the report will be delivered to the relevant authority's customer services email address (with all the required details including images, location map etc). A Local Authority does not need to subscribe to receive notifications automatically. The service is nationally enabled.

    Local Authorities can choose to subscribe to our service and this provides the ability to set up data integration and synchronisation with their selected CRM (web services). Additionally subscription provides the Council with access to a wide range of communications, mobile working, reporting and other value added functionality. I mention this just to clear up the - 'why are we doing this?' question.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Take note...

      ... of the app2sd function others have mentioned, when you get the chance. A lot of savvy Android users take note of this when looking at apps to download.

      Other than nice interface, let's see if my council take notice of the reports.

  13. Richard Lloyd
    FAIL

    Doesn't work on my (CyanogenMod 7) HP TouchPad

    I don't know about other Android tablets, but this app is marked as "not compatible" in the Android Market with my HP TouchPad+CyanogenMod 7 setup. If this applies to other Android tablets too, then perhaps it deserves an "epic fail" rating? I find it a bit difficult to believe that a government app on Android would only work on mobile phones and not tablets, so maybe it's something specific to the TouchPad (e.g. screen res etc.)?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      re: Doesn't work on my (CyanogenMod 7) HP TouchPad

      Probably because there's no GPS/phone location hardware in the TP, so it doesn't know where you are? (TP owner, but no android on it yet, but then have a phone for that...).

    2. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Doesn't work on my (CyanogenMod 7) HP TouchPad

      CyanogenMod on the TouchPad is in such an early pre-release stage you can't honestly expect anything to work on it.

  14. Dward

    Potholes

    I've been using 'Fix My Street!' for this for a while. Great for sending pothole pics to the council... These apps are genuinely useful and I think they encourage people to report things they'd normally not go to the effort of complaining about.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yet another useful-looking app that I'll never install because of unnecessary permission requests

    Yet another useful-looking app that I'll never install because of unnecessary permission requests.

    - Mount and unmount filesystems.

    - Record audio.

    - Take pictures and videos.

    Why these are necessary for a glorified email forwarder, I don't know...

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Yet another useful-looking app that I'll never install because of unnecessary permission requests

      That's probably forced on the app by Google.

    2. dotdavid
      Facepalm

      Re: Permissions

      "- Take pictures and videos."

      Presumably so you can provide evidence of the problem.

      "- Mount and unmount filesystems."

      Presumably so the stored images and videos won't take up application "data" internal memory and can be stored on SD card instead.

      "- Record audio."

      Perhaps so videos you record include audio?

      I would hardly claim they're unnecessary permissions, at least for what the developer seems to want to do.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "- Take pictures and videos."

        I made no assumption, as neither the app description or screenshots gave any hint of this.

        However, BerniS' comment above does mention submitting images - so okay :)

        "- Mount and unmount filesystems."

        No, the "modify/delete SD card contents" permission it also requires gives access to the SD card - this one shouldn't be necessary, I think it's only used for mounting the SD card as USB mass storage when connected to a PC - this along with the "mock location sources for testing" permission makes me suspect it's just been left in from testing.

        When it comes to giving unknown software rights to functions on the computer that is generally within 5m of me 24/7, I'm a lot less presumptuous - but then I am a cranky old git ;)

        1. dotdavid

          " I think it's only used for mounting the SD card as USB mass storage when connected to a PC - this along with the "mock location sources for testing" permission makes me suspect it's just been left in from testing."

          You might be right there. Looks like an oversight, just like the lack of app2sd (or they didn't understand the Android docs which is unfortunately also quite common). Anyway it exactly doesn't fill me with confidence about the app.

  16. Silverburn
    Unhappy

    Where is the...

    ..."Council tax price problem" option?

    Bunch of money grabbing/wasting...

  17. Anomalous Cowturd
    Meh

    Fly typing?

    Can't have people dumping sacks of letters and digits all over the place.

  18. WhoIsThis?
    Happy

    For anyone who doesn't like a private company holding their data.....

    fixmystreet.com have mobile appps for iPhone, Android and Nokia - they are part of mySociety.org

    It would be interesting to compare the two offerings - I know the fixmystreet offerings automatically forward the reports to the relevant council.

  19. Dave 15

    oh please

    "Can't hide behind a wall of anonymity" how stupid - of course they can, an email address can be obtained and I doubt that either it, the info provided (perhaps to hotmail) or even the mobile phone number are actually checked by a real person really phoning up... Thus all the info can be fake - and it is whenever I am filling in unnecessary detail demanded on various webforms.

    "is the car taxed" - the DVLA are busy telling us no one can hide from their computers for tax or insurance... so thats a pointless question isn't it.

    In fact, as the council will blindly ignore you just as much as they ignore everyone unless you don't pay your council tax makes the whole application a waste of time, effort, space on your phone, money.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dairy Bulls

    Looks really interesting, but one of the potential options on one of the screenshots puzzles me.

    Could some knowledgeable ElReg reader inform me of the correct protocol to establish the age of a dairy bull?

    I mean I'd hate to be walking down the streets in my area of South East London and happen upon a dairy bull of indeterminate age that was blocking my way.

    1. I_am_Chris

      What on earth is a dairy bull anyway?

      I get my milk from dairy *cows*. At least I hope I do...

      1. Colin Miller
        Headmaster

        Dairy cattle and beef cattle are different breeds of cattle. I assume they meant a dairy-breed bull.

        Why they are bothered whether it is dairy or beef, or even a cow or bull, is beyond me, its still going to make a mess of your car if you hit it.

  21. John 98

    Incompatible with my xperia mini pro (bog standard 2.2) - after I'd spent 15 minutes tracking it down with my PC's help. Needs more work gets my vote

  22. sheep++;
    Thumb Down

    Collecting my personal info

    which unencrypted, left on a laptop and said laptop left on a train. Yet again, another example of a screw-up involving personal details.

  23. Peter Townsend
    Stop

    Dairy Bulls

    doesn't matter how big the bugger is, just remember to keep your bag up.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anonymity

    "Can't hide behind a wall of anonymity" how stupid - of course they can"

    I think the author's point was that the account contact details give the council the opportunity to contact you to follow up on any serious complaints.

    If they found the details, esp the phone number, were false I imagine they would not take the complaint forward and disregard it.

    I've worked for a local council and complaints of a serious nature about an individual have to be made either to a police officer or a council representative in person and in writing so using this app would only be first step in the process.

  25. jonathanb Silver badge

    If you don't like this app

    You could always try fixmystreet, available for Jesus Phones, Android and Nokia. They are a charity who provide free (en_rms) | open source (en_esr) software, and all reports are publicly available on their website. I reported a few things to my council using it - bins not emptied, fly posting, broken traffic lights, and they fix the problem pretty promptly.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unfortunately...

    ... fixmystreet don't provide back-end intergration to the systems that the Councils use for tracking these type of jobs. Where as MyCouncil do from what I understand from my District Council who have opted for the full intergration with these guys. What with all Councils trying to cut down on costs, new systems need to be intergrated front and back to lower the cost of administration, lower that cost and you have a valid reason for lowering staff costs or redeploying their day-to-day admin onto other tasks. Basically it's all about efficiency.

  27. CompuGuide

    Not compatible with HTC Desire running MIUI ROM with data-to-ext-partition.

  28. Steve Evans

    Gritting...

    I wonder if there is a way of requesting gritting, or will my road, and the 3 others I have to take before I reach a gritted bus route, turn into a wreck-strewn ice-rink for a month - as usual.

  29. CompuGuide

    Response from My Council Services

    I posted the following message to their Support site:-

    FYI this app fails to install on my phone with this message “Your device is not compatible with this item”

    I have the HTC Desire and suspect this is because I have rooted the phone, replacing HTC Sense with the MIUI ROM which allows apps to be run from the SD card so as to free up internal RAM. You may want to consider modifying the app to facilitate this, thus allowing you to reach a larger technically literate audience. Thanks

    ... and got the following response:-

    Thank you for your email. We cannot allow the app to be run from the SD card as it means anyone can have access to our control scripts which define how the program should look for each council.

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