Fife Council system glitch sends out wrong pothole message

The faults had seemingly been fixed but in recent months a computer glitch meant emails were sent out to the people who had reported the defects to ask them for an update.

That led to confusion as to whether work had been carried out to fill the potholes in the first place or if the repair had failed and needed a second fix.

The issue was raised at the Cowdenbeath area committee where councillors were told that digital tools and AI are helping to improve the pothole and patching performance of the roads service.

Cllr Bailey-Lee Robb sought assurances that the system will be "up to scratch" and said: "I had reported a number of potholes at the tail end of 2022 which is almost four years ago now and I was getting emails a few months ago saying that the service has investigated this?

"I was aware the service did say there was an issue with the system and a backlog and that was the reason but that doesn't give me confidence in the tools you're mentioning."

Gordon Henderson, the lead consultant for road network condition, admitted there was a problem while the council was migrating from one system to another.

He said "buttons were pushed on that by other teams across the council that resulted in old cases being reopened and very confusing messages getting sent out to customers".

Mr Henderson added: "As a council we put a quick stop to that as, you're totally right, that caused a lot of confusion.

"The amount of enquiries that invariably came to myself, as someone was getting asked 'Why am I getting asked for an update on something that happened in 2022?' or previous to that.

"I do apologise for any confusion that happened there. That's definitely since been resolved."

The officer explained that AI was just a tool to assist the service and, as well as the new system making it easier to report and respond to potholes and defects, he said all of the roads on the network are routinely inspected to identify faults.