The archive · Public & Social · Product decision · 2007–2017
FixMyStreet lets residents pin street problems on a map — 1M+ reports to UK councils
FixMyStreet turns a street complaint into a map pin — routed to the right council and published; 1M+ UK reports by 2017.
mySociety
What it had to solve
mySociety, a UK not-for-profit, saw that councils buried fault-reporting forms while residents often didn't know which authority handled a broken lamp or a pothole. It set out in 2007 to make reporting as easy as dropping a pin.
How it works
FixMyStreet is a civic website mySociety launched in the UK in 2007: anyone can find a place on a map, describe a broken streetlight or pothole, and the site automatically sends the report to the council responsible. The report is published publicly, so neighbours can see it and councils can be seen fixing it.
mySociety designed it around the citizen's problem, not the council's departments: no name-and-address form first, no guessing which authority handles what — location comes first, and the routing happens underneath. The first public report, about a broken streetlight in Oxford, was sent on 2 February 2007; more than 1,000 reports followed in the first week.
The idea spread because it was simple to copy: the code was open source, so Norway launched its own version (FiksGataMi) in 2011, and from 2012 UK councils bought white-label 'FixMyStreet for Councils' systems. Bromley, a London borough with poor GPS coverage, went from 3% to 50% of street problems being reported online after mySociety built an offline-friendly app for it.
FixMyStreet reached its one-millionth report in July 2017, and university researchers counted 1.1 million-plus neighbourhood reports over its first eleven years. Transparency was central: mySociety published every report so people didn't file duplicates and councils could show work that used to be invisible.
Why it lands
- Starts with the map, not the form — the citizen's friction disappears and the council routing happens invisibly.
- One site works across all UK councils, so residents never need to know which authority owns a road or a lamp.
- Publishing every report turns complaints into public records councils can answer, cutting duplicate reports.
- Open-source code let other countries and councils reuse the idea instead of rebuilding it.
What it did
More than 1,000 reports were filed in the first week; the one-millionth report was sent in July 2017, and research counted 1.1 million-plus neighbourhood reports from 2007 to 2017. Bromley went from 3% to 50% of street problems reported online, and by 2017 the site handled roughly 4,000 reports a week.
What you can take
When the job is fixing the street, the shortest path — a map pin instead of a form — is the whole idea; publishing every report turns complaints into public accountability.
Since then
FixMyStreet became one of the UK's best-known civic apps and a reference point for civic tech worldwide. mySociety kept extending it — an app, council white-label products, integrations with council backends — and the code was reused for projects from spotting empty homes (alongside Channel 4, earning Emmy and Bafta nominations) to exposing clinics out of tuberculosis vaccine in India. The one-million-report milestone in 2017 and continued growth show the format outlived any single campaign.
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