Lincolnshire council outlines improvements for FixMyStreet
Improvements could be made to the service used by Lincolnshire residents to report road issues such as potholes.
Members of Lincolnshire County Council’s Highways and Transport Scrutiny Committee heard that the authority is planning to roll out additional features to the FixMyStreet service, including extra information on issues such as drainage and more personalised responses.
FixMyStreet is a national website which many local authorities, including Lincolnshire County Council, pay for to allow residents to report road and street issues such as potholes.
The county council said it currently pays approximately £38,000 a year to administer the service in Lincolnshire.
Members also heard that more than 45,000 reports were submitted to the county council in 2025 and the authority had provided almost 300,000 updates in response to the queries it had received.
Councillors also heard that the authority is planning to improve the quality of responses sent to residents once they make an inquiry.
The council wants to use the platform to let people know when drains are going to be cleaned out and wants to offer a clearer estimated timescale about when an issue will be dealt with.
At a meeting on Monday, January 26, highways liaison manager Ellen Kelman acknowledged that the service was not perfect and that some improvements were needed.
She said: “Some key improvements for the next 12 months include continuing to improve the updates that we send to customers by refining our template responses to ensure that customers receive the right information in the right process.
“When highways officers change the status of a job in the asset management system, this triggers an automatic update to be sent to customers.
“As an experienced user of FixMyStreet, our approach and the templates that we use have often been recognised as examples of best practice, but we do recognise as a service that in some scenarios our templates might not be fit for purpose. So this is an ongoing priority of ours going forward.
“Additionally, we’ll be introducing more guidance and prompts at the point of reporting to make it more intuitive for customers.
“This will include clear instructions and map keys.”
She added: “As well, we’ll be trying to make things clearer for the customers. These changes will help triage become more effective from an officer point of view.”
Coun Ingrid Sheard (Reform UK – Spalding Elloe division) praised the service and said it has made it easier for many residents to report problems.
She said: “First of all, I love FixMyStreet. I absolutely use it and I’m amazed, actually, at the cost of it because I alone probably throw in thousands of queries and concerns over the years that I’ve been a district and county councillor.
“I know that people who I’m highlighting to them how to report are finding it really easy to use.
“They’re finding it really informative and I’m really encouraged by the improvements and the monitoring that we’re going to have of that.”
But Coun Stuart Grantham (Reform UK – Hartsholme division) said that while he was a “big advocate” for the service, he has experienced long waits for some problems to be fixed.
He said that he also reported a pothole in August last year but said that it has “only just been fixed.”
He added: “One of the other issues I’ve been finding is myself, or even residents, having been pointing out about even just cutting back trees in my division down Doddington Road and Birchwood Avenue and I’m just not getting a response – that’s either from FixMyStreet or even officers.
“I’m getting a bit agitated about it since it’s been over five months now with no feedback toward myself or those residents.”
Coun Charlotte Vernon (Conservative – Colsterworth Rural division) questioned whether the authority would always be able to meet the anticipated timescales and that some of these targets could be missed.
She said: “I do have some concerns about the risk of quoting a timescale. It’s risky.
“Potholes – possibly – but other areas, I think are very difficult to judge and I think we’ve seen first hand in this scrutiny panel how planned works can be delayed – even something that’s been planned for weeks and weeks and weeks and I do worry about managing the expectations of the public.
“We do have quite a good reputation, I think, us turning up and I’d hate for this to damage that if I’m being brutally honest.”
The county council said it has recently introduced additional information around grass cutting and when the authority is next scheduled to cut the grass on a specific area of council-maintained land.
The executive councillor for highways and transport will consider the proposals at a later date.