Potholes – like this one on Napier Close, Deakin, that took weeks to fix – are common complaints from Canberra residents. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
“If there were Google reviews on the Fix My Street website, I would give this a 0/5 rating.”
So go many of the emails that find themselves in the inbox of Shadow Minister for City Service (and Canberra Liberals Member for Yerrabi) James Milligan.
It’s reached the point that Mr Milligan called for a full-scale review into the online tool that allows Canberrans to report issues with footpaths, grass, trees, streetlights and more to the ACT Government.
And the government has agreed.
In a motion presented to the ACT Legislative Assembly yesterday (14 May), Mr Milligan said residents are “frustrated and disillusioned by the ongoing neglect of basic city services”.
He rattled through cases involving a resident in Dickson who threatened to paint over graffiti in a Kaleen underpass himself – for the fourth time in a month – if the government didn’t, and another of a Crace resident who lodged repeated complaints about the “dangerous” height of grass near a roundabout.
Another, an active cyclist, spoke to the ABC in September last year about how he had ended up with a broken hip and wrist after hitting a patch of broken cycle path. In this case, the cyclist sued the government, and the matter was settled out of court.
“How many Canberrans suffer quietly from neglected broken lights, dangerous trees, or unmaintained public land and are just not going public on these issues,” Mr Milligan asked the Assembly.
Fix My Street is the online tool that lets you report an issue to ACT City Services crews for attention, covering cycle and footpaths, grass, trees, roads, parks, public spaces, stormwater systems and streetlights.
You can submit a request either online using your ACT ‘Digital Account’ or by phoning Access Canberra on 13 22 81.
Fix My Street portal. Photo: James Coleman.
But Mr Milligan argued the system is “clearly not as functional as it should be”.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to has told me the Fix My Street initiative is pretty much useless. The process takes too long, requires too many complaints, and is frustrating a lot of locals.”
The motion received the support of the ACT Greens, who made the point “the government must invest in budget and improving outdated, clunky software and databases” and independent MLA Thomas Emerson, who said the state of Canberra’s footpaths was “certainly the most common matter that lands in my inbox”.
“Members of our community shouldn’t feel they have to constantly badger the government and their elected representatives for something which should really be an essential service,” Mr Emerson said.
Minister for City Services Tara Cheyne says she welcomes the inquiry into Fix My Street. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
ACT Minister for City Services Tara Cheyne said she was so confident about recent improvements to Fix My Street she said would “welcome an inquiry”.
“I would love for the light to be shone finally on the extraordinary efforts that have been undertaken by Access Canberra and TCCS to improve Fix My Street, particularly over these last 13 and 14 months,” she said.
She said a large part came down to the new dedicated “Fix My Street team” tasked with handling complaints and reducing pressure on the City Service crews.
In 2023, 51,868 requests were lodged through Fix My Street, followed by 46,976 in 2024. In 2025, to 26 March, 13,375 requests have been lodged.
According to Ms Cheyne, about a thousand cases are lodged each week, and between 750 and 1000 are closed each week.
“In 2023, the average time to resolve a Fix My Street request was 99 days – not good enough. Around 35 per cent of the jobs, however, were resolved in under 10 days,” she said.
“Due to the significant improvements that have been made throughout 2024, the average time for resolving a Fix My Street job to date is 20 days … with nearly half of job requests resolved within 10 calendar days.”
She argued many of the problems stemmed from “insufficient detail” provided in anonymous requests, and because they were anonymous, there was no way for the crew to follow up. This “usually just resulted in job closure”.
Many complainants were also making the issues hard for crews to find by using the form’s map function “incorrectly” and pinning the location of the issue “on their house, or in the ocean – all things that were not particularly helpful”.
“This was previously resulting in 40 per cent of jobs being incorrectly allocated.”
Graffiti at the Dickson Shops. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
Ms Cheyne claimed this issue has been addressed in recent updates, and work is also underway on better communication to let complainants know if an issue has been fixed.
“At the moment, it says, ‘Thank you for letting us know about graffiti. The issue has been rectified’,” Ms Cheyne said.
“Well, for me, that’s not quite enough information. What do you mean ‘rectified’? Has it been painted? Has it been scrubbed off, or has it been left there because it’s meant to be there?
“And so I’ve been working with the directorate … about what is the information or photo we can provide back to the customer when we let them know that we’ve closed their case.”
Ms Cheyne rejected the motion’s suggestion that the ACT should adopt similar technology to NSW’s ‘Snap Send Solve’ app.
“I met with Snap Send Solve at the beginning of last year, and it turned out they were just forwarding requests that had been put through Snap Sense Solve to an email address that was defunct. So anyone who was using Snap Sense Solve was probably not going to get a response either.”
The matter has been referred to the Standing Committee on Planning, Transport and City Services, which has until December 2025 to publish its first report.
