How New Zealand actually works, reporting a problem
Reporting a problem, what happens after you tap send
A dumped couch, a leaking toby, a pothole with ambition. The report takes a photo and a pin; what happens next is a route through a call centre, a triage queue and a crew, and, in Christchurch, a public record that says how long it took.
The front door
Most public reports arrive through Snap Send Solve, the app that photographs a problem, reads the pin, and routes it to the right authority by location and type. The council's own phone and web channels take the same reports; Snap Send Solve is simply the door that publishes its half of the ledger, which is why this site's feed and the problems pages are built from it. A report is a notification to the record: a person, a place, a problem, a timestamp.
Who actually owns the problem
The first real question isn't what the problem is, it's whose it is. The same street corner can belong to four different agencies:
- Christchurch City Council, the roads, footpaths, drains, parks, trees, kerbside bins, noise bylaws and most of what a street photo shows — CCC, report a problem.
- Environment Canterbury, the rivers, drains that are assets rather than gutters, and the consents that let things flow into them.
- NZTA Waka Kotahi, the state highways, which are several of Christchurch's busiest roads despite running through the city (Moorhouse, Brougham, the avenues' arterial stretches).
- The utilities and the police, power and phone lines to their owners; genuinely dangerous situations to 111; abandoned vehicles with the plates intact to the council's parking arm.
Snap Send Solve's routing is the service, the app knows the boundaries so you don't have to. A report sent to the wrong desk is the most common reason a report dies quietly.
What "fixed" means in the record
When the problem is resolved, the record gets a matching entry, the report and its resolution pair up. This site keeps both halves: the problems pages count what gets reported where, and the fix entries say how long the record took between the two events. Read those numbers as the system's own account of itself, a fast "fixed" is the record saying a crew closed it, not an auditor certifying the repair. The honest caveat is built into the data: what isn't reported isn't measured.
Because the record measures the report, not the repair. A surface fix on a failed road base is a calendar invitation, the report stream on a street page will show the same fault recurring seasonally until the rebuild reaches it. Recurrence in the record isn't noise; it's the record arguing for a bigger fix.
What makes a report work
- The pin matters more than the prose. A report that lands on the right parcel goes to the right crew; one that lands between two properties takes a detour through triage.
- The photo is the evidence. It survives the report, it goes in the record and the dispatch sheet alike.
- Choose the category that owns the fix, not the one that describes the annoyance, "leaking toby" under water, not "puddle" under roads.
- Danger isn't a report. Live wires, blocked lanes, someone at risk, phone it in. The app is the queue, not the siren.
The feed you read on this site is this exact machinery in public: every report a datapoint, every fix a pair. The suburb and street pages are the same reports sorted by place, so the answer to "does the council ever fix my street" is on your street's page, in its own numbers.
Last reviewed 23 September 2026, sources: Snap Send Solve, CCC contact and report-a-problem pages, this site's problem and fix records. Corrections: /corrections.
Questions, answered briefly
Most public reports go through Snap Send Solve, the app takes a photo and a pin and routes the problem to the right authority by location and type. The council's own phone and web channels take the same reports; genuinely dangerous situations go to 111, not the app.
It depends whose problem it is: Christchurch City Council owns roads, footpaths, drains, parks, trees, kerbside bins and noise bylaws; Environment Canterbury owns rivers and drain assets; NZTA owns the state highways like Moorhouse and Brougham; power and phone lines go to their utilities. A report sent to the wrong desk is the most common reason one dies quietly.
The report and its resolution pair up in the record, a fast "fixed" says a crew closed it, not that an auditor certified the repair. What is not reported is not measured; the problems pages count both halves.
Because the record measures the report, not the repair, a surface fix on a failed road base recurs seasonally until the road is rebuilt. The report stream on a street page shows the same fault coming back, and recurrence in the record is the argument for a bigger fix.