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Love Medway app

In today’s Medway Messenger (Friday, 23 September), on page 6 a story headlined ‘Litter tip-offs from ‘public’ mostly from council staff’ reports that responses to the council’s Love Medway app are mainly from council employees, with only a few actually from the public.

We have never stated that these reports – or ‘tip-offs’ – are mainly from the public. Please see our full statement below, which was provided to the Messenger. This shows that the fact that more members of staff report through the mobile phone app than members of the public is not a surprise and is to be expected.

Medway Council’s Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Customer Contact, Cllr Mike O’Brien, said: “We have always said from the outset that the Love Medway app, as well as being available to the public, was for the council’s community officers to use while out on patrol to take pictures of and log any issues they spot.

“This is because the app makes it easier, cheaper and quicker to report problems, reducing the time it takes to get the query on the system from around 20 minutes to 40 seconds.

“The app also more than pays for itself by reducing the amount of paper work and staff duplication that can be involved when handling these kind of reports and getting them logged.

“Medway is now the second highest authority in the country for the number of reports logged using the app. This is just behind Lewisham who have said that since the introduction of their app, the number of calls from the public reporting litter, graffiti and environmental issues have reduced and the cost of handling calls has decreased by about three times.

“As the app is intended for council community officers to use while out on patrol, we expect the number of cases logged by council staff to be considerably higher. However, we are keen for residents to use the Love Medway app to report any issues they spot in their area to the council so we can get the problem solved as quickly as possible.

“Using the app also means that residents can track issues and follow what the council is doing to get them resolved.

"You can download the Love Medway app on your phone from the Android, Blackberry, 'Windows' and Apple application stores."

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