As part of the Councillors Digital Update meetings Cllr Jon Twigge suggested getting street light reporting upgraded on the new website early.  That work is almost complete and should be live in a few weeks.  The new system will show much more information than the current one with a history of what has happened for each report.

There will be a new upgraded map to click on to identify the lights that are faulty – the old one does not always work very well, if at all, on mobile devices.

Local Lib Dem campaigner Paul Ankers was delighted to hear the news, “It will be much easier to report Street Light faults and keep track of them with this new system.

“One of the biggest problems was not knowing why a light was broken.  Now there will be a new colour on the map, amber, when a fault has been passed to the utility company for repairs.”

The first version will be a big improvement but more will follow and Jon wants to see a GPS system, like Sat Navs use, so that the map automatically shows the street you are standing on, if you are using a smartphone, making it much easier to find a particular light to report.

Following the floods there has been a lot of attention on drains.  The examples shown here illustrate a couple of the problems.  To help the public report blocked drains more easily and see when they are fixed Jon has been asking to get the drain reporting upgraded as well.  The good news is that drains are now next to be upgraded after street lights – there will be a map to help report them and we should be able to see all the ones that have been reported and fixed.  (The old system has a map but it doesn’t work at all).