(pic: Henry Bloomfield)
Like any other area Bournville’s roads seem to be full of potholes at the moment. Both side streets and main road have their fair share. So how do you go about telling the council where they are? The answer isn’t quite as straightforward as you’d expect.
Whilst Birmingham City Council were in the news last week when they decided to use the micro-blogging service Twitter to encourage citizens to report potholes (to the @BCCNewsRoom account) , that may not be the most direct method. All tweets are passed on the highways department who already have their own methods of direct contact:
- Call them: 0121 303 6644 (daytime) or 0121 303 4149 (evening / weekends)
- Email them: highways [at] birmingham.gov.uk
- Fill out their form: http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/potholerepair
There are some third party reporting methods out there that take enquiries from any area of the UK and send them to the appropriate local authority contacts. The best of these, fixmystreet, allows you to see if anyone else has reported the same pothole using this service. Dan Davies has usefully created a map of reported Birmingham potholes using fixmystreet data and some residents in Kings Heath are using the fixmystreet mobile application to undertake a ‘pothole hunt‘.
Fill That Hole is focused on the cyclist community: “CTC, the UK’s national cyclists’ organisation, is asking all road users to report potholes and hazards on this website.” It publishes a league table that shows 39% of Birmingham potholes reported through this service are subsequently fixed.
Finally, potholes.co.uk is a fairly slick-looking website that also has a reporting service although it only had one pothole reported for the whole of Bournville. The focus seems to be on helping people claim compensation for damage to their vehicle and is financed by a car warranty company.
With so many reporting methods many potholes will be reported more than once, presumably much to the annoyance of those working in the highways department! Whichever way you contact the council they make the following commitment to responding to your enquiry:
“We’ll inspect withing five working days maximum anything you report.
Dangerous defects will be made safe within 24 hours of the report.
Very dangerous situations will be made safe within 2 hours.
All other defects will be scheduled for repair within planned programmes; mostly within 28 days”
Finally, be grateful that filling in potholes remains the job of the local council and let’s hope some of the more disturbing ideas from the USA don’t make it over here any time soon:
I think you highlight the fact that there are getting to be too many places to do the same thing on the web. As far as Birmingham City Council’s responsibilities go I would rather have have one responsive channel on the web – run by the Council. Then if there are problems it would be great to have a clear campaigning place.
You don’t mention the account you can tweet potholes too its @BCCNewsRoom As you imply this goes to the PR team not Highways – which points to it being a PR stunt rather than a thought through strategy. Looking at their stream it begs the question is this the best place for citizens to interact with the Council? If significant numbers did wouldn’t they be overwhelmed?
And like a lot of PR tweeting, their stream is mainly a broadcast one – not much sign of conversations. And if you do report a pothole you get a standard response by the look of it.
And, not surprisingly they have 800 odd followers of which many are not residents so their reach is tiny at the moment.
Given the resource that would need to be dedicated to a range of Twitter accounts I wonder if it is actually the right way to go?
Thanks Brian. Just tweaked the text to make it clearer that it is to the bccnewsroom account.
Everyone wants a piece of the pothole reporting pie it seems. Where my Mom is from in rural Ireland residents tend to go mend the potholes themselves on side roads and lanes as it takes an age for the council to come out. More filling, less tweeting over here as well maybe?
@Dave Harte
Good idea! I think I heard a piece on the radio about some instant pothole repair stuff – was it from a Tamworth company?
My neighbourhood (bromsgrove) is still atrocious, Bromsgrove Council are taking far too long to fix the pot holes so I wonder if Birmingham have bested them now.