Leicester City Council

We procured the development of a variation of the widely used Clean Streets app called the Love Leicester app. It was used by residents to report environmental issues such as fly-tipping, graffiti and dog fouling. The app accounted for 40% of all environment-related reports by customers. However, it is not integrated with back office systems and so the processing of reports is highly manual and laborious. It is not compatible with our customer platform and this standalone feature means customers to either portal can never get a full picture of all reports relating to a specific event. Data collection and collation is also manual and onerous and is always out of date, so is used just for historical information.

Having learnt from the previous stage, we want to develop an app that is fully integrated with our customer platform so that customer reports can be digitally processed end to end and information given back to the customer is accurate and up to date. We would also like to expand its functionality through the integration with our customer platform so that customers can use the app to interact with the Council in ways other than for the reporting of environmental issues.

Discovery evidence

Despite developing our customer platform to maximise responsiveness on all devices, customers still complained that it was not easy to use ‘on the go’. Customers also complain about having to sign in whenever they want to access their customer account especially when out and about, having to remember their passwords and the inconvenient journey of accessing the council website, then their account, and then signing into their account before they could report an incident or check some information. Our current app is not integrated with our existing customer platform so customers have two separate accounts that don’t share information. Its limited functionality is also a source of ongoing customer frustration. This project will address this growing service gap by enabling us to provide a fully integrated and expanded service to customers.

We found the growth, appeal and accessibility of apps especially with a large proportion of our demography meant this is fast becoming an expected channel of interaction. As The Guardian reflected, they work faster than mobile websites and are more interactive, as well as being easier to personalise. They are also instantly accessible from anywhere at the touch of a button – making citizens far more likely to use them.