For highways, street scene and information governance teams
What you would be receiving.
You are probably here because I emailed you asking for a team inbox or an Open311 key. This page is the detail behind that, so you can decide without a meeting.
What a report contains
One problem, one report, already routed to you and already categorised against the six types you actually deal with.
- A photograph, with number plates and faces blurred before upload.
- A location taken from the photograph’s EXIF data, not from where the reporter happened to be standing when they filled the form. Where the photo carries no location, the reporter is asked to place it on a map or give a postcode — it is never inferred.
- The category, mapped to your own taxonomy rather than ours.
- The reporter’s name and email address. They are the person making the report. Your reply goes to them.
What we do not do
We do not submit your web forms automatically. Before building anything
we checked whether it was possible, found that the platform seven London councils use
returns Disallow: / for every user agent, and archived that to the Wayback
Machine so the position is dated and citable. We concluded automated submission is not
ours to do, and we do not do it — by headless browser, by script, or otherwise.
Where a form is the only route, we open it and let the reporter fill it in.
We do not retain registration numbers. There is no plate field in the database. A plate is passed to you with the report and then discarded.
We do not publish reports. There is no public map, no league table and no naming of drivers or of councils.
We do not make criminal allegations. Every category is civil highways or street scene. Driving offences go to the police, not to you and not through us.
We do not file complaints on anyone’s behalf automatically. Escalation to a formal complaint, and to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman, is a decision the reporter has to take deliberately. The app never nags them into it.
Data minimisation
The reporter is the data controller of their own report; we transmit it for them. We hold the minimum needed to show them what they sent and whether you replied.
Never collected
Registration numbers. Unblurred images. Anyone’s location other than the location of the problem being reported.
Held, then expired
The redacted photograph, on a storage lifecycle rule so expiry is enforced by infrastructure rather than by someone remembering.
Where it lives
United Kingdom. London region, no transfers outside the UK.
Analytics
None. No cookies, no third-party scripts, no tracking on this site or in the app.
What we are asking for
Either of these helps. The second helps considerably more, for both of us.
- A team inbox that accepts reports. Email is the only channel that is genuinely one action for the reporter and arrives with you in one piece, photograph attached, without anyone rekeying it out of a form.
- An Open311 API key. If you run FixMyStreet Pro you already have an endpoint. A key means reports land straight in your back office with no email handling at all, and it means we can read status back rather than emailing you to ask — which is less contact from us, not more.
We will work to whatever you want to impose: a daily volume cap, a restricted category list, a required USRN on every report, a trial period, or review before the service opens to anyone beyond me. If you have acceptable-use or data sharing terms you already apply to FixMyStreet, we will sign those.
Who is accountable
Usama, a cyclist in London, operating independently. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any local authority, Transport for London, or any government body.
The routing data — every channel, for all 34 authorities, each with the page it was read from — is kept in the open so you can check what we hold about your authority and correct it. If we have your channel wrong, telling us fixes it for everyone.
Email hello@tellthecouncil.uk