“Utter Farce” as Durham Council’s new all singing and dancing computer system stops councillors and employees reporting problems.

Durham County Council has taken a new system online to improve reporting of issues such as potholes, missed bin collections, litter and flytipping.

Unfortunately, the new system will not allow anyone with a Council email address to register. This means that the 126 County Councillors on Durham’s unitary authority can’t use it. Or for that matter the 1000’s of council employees!! We have also been told that we can’t use personal email addresses either! So we can’t use the system and are back to emailing in issues we need to report.

Except the new system doesn’t respond to you including the message you sent, so if we send more than one request for action we haven’t a clue which reference refers to which issue.

As I frequently send in up to a dozen issues at a time ranging from litter to flytipping to pothole repairs, I and all other councillors are now left trying to figure out which response refers to which request because of the Labour-run Council failing to make sure it had a brand new system which worked.

Only in County Durham!

I have contacted the Director of Neighbourhood Services to point this out. Apparently the council is going to try and find a solution but it could be some time in September or October. We are also to be “consulted” on how the new system works for us – a bit late isnt it when its already live?