Barnet Council Potholes special : Another Barnet Eye success !

If you want something done in Barnet, yet again it seems that telling The Barnet Eye is the way to do it. This has been shown yet again by the latest press release from Barnet Council. This details the success of the http://barnet.fixmystreet.com/ website. This came to my attention last month and I thought to myself "Hang on, this is a great idea. Why don't I shout about it on my blog, so that residents can get a better service from the Council". I did some research and found that nobody seemed to know about it.

I immediately posted a blog detailing the site and telling the Council to get their act together. I am pleased to say that this has had an immediate effect. According to the Council press release

During February alone, 285 reports have been received by the council through the website, an increase of 125 compared to January.

On my blog I use a tracker system called Statcounter.com and I'm pleased to say that there have been a large number of people looking at this site and then going straight to Fixmystreet.com to report problems. In my original blog, I criticised the Council for failing to properly publicise the website. Again this has been acknowleged by the Council. Councillor Daniel Thomas, says in the last paragraph of the press release :-

It is great to see the site continues to grow month on month. However this growth in the website is demonstrating that we seem to be better at fixing the problems than we are at telling people we have done so - the next step for us is to fix that

I have a message for Councillor Thomas and all of the other Councillors in Barnet. This blog is read by tens of thousands of people in Barnet. Whilst I don't necessarily agree with all of the politics of the current administration, I will support ANYTHING which makes life better for Barnet residents. That is why I have been plugging FIXMYSTREET. I've put it in the sidebar at the top, so it's easy to find. If any Barnet Councillor (irrespective of party) knows of anything which I could publicise to the greater good, I'll do it here for free. I am sure that Barnet Council keeps stats on it's computer. They can see how many people visited their site directly from this blog. If they want any help getting their message across, they only have to ask ! It's just a shame that I didn't discover the site in January when it was launched.

(by the way, you might be interested to know that the screenshot at the top of the page of the current image of Fixmystreet has the picture of potholes in Millway which I submitted with my report. You'll be pleased to know these were fixed yesterday. You can check out the full report on the site here - http://barnet.fixmystreet.com/report/98848 )