How to report a problem to Bermuda government

A pothole on your road, a streetlight that has been out for weeks, an overflowing bin. None of these are complicated problems. Knowing who in Bermuda government to tell, and giving them the details they need, is the part that stalls. Here is what makes a report easy to act on.

Why “call the government” does not work well

Bermuda’s government is organised into departments, and the one that fixes a pothole is not the one that fixes a streetlight, which is not the one that handles an overflowing public bin. Call the wrong department, or the general switchboard, and the report has to be passed along by hand before anyone able to fix it sees it. Each handoff adds delay, and some reports do not survive it.

What speeds a report up

Three things make the difference between a report that gets actioned and one that sits in an inbox:

The right department, the first time. A report that lands directly with the department responsible skips the internal routing entirely.

A photo. Whoever is dispatched to fix it can see the scale of the problem before they arrive, rather than discovering it is worse (or already fixed) once they get there.

A precise location. A street name is useful. A pin on a map is better, because it removes any ambiguity about which of three potholes on the same road you mean.

fix.bm: put it on the public map, no account needed

fix.bm is a free, Bermuda-built tool for the photo and the pin: you drop a pin on the map, pick what the problem is from 45 categories in nine groups (roads, transport, parks, waste, environmental health, water and sewage, planning and emergency services), describe it and add a photo. There is no account to create, and you can report anonymously with one tick. Your report goes up on a public map, so anyone can see it has been flagged.

fix.bm does not yet send reports on to Government departments, so a report there is a public record, not a request to the department. To make sure the department hears, contact it directly as well. For road potholes, Public Works asks for reports to [email protected] or through the Government’s GovAlert app.

What to include in a report

Whichever way you report a problem, the same details make it actionable:

• What the problem is, described plainly, not just “pothole” but “large pothole in the northbound lane.”
• Where it is, ideally a pin, otherwise the nearest cross street or landmark.
• A photo, taken close enough to show the actual damage or issue.
• How long it has been there, if you know, since this affects how departments prioritise a backlog.

After you report it

We cannot tell you how any given department prioritises its backlog, and anyone who claims to know is guessing. What is within your control is arriving in the right inbox with enough detail that nobody has to triage or forward it first.

If a problem is genuinely urgent, a downed power line or a serious road hazard, call rather than submit. No reporting tool can promise a response time.

For everything else, tell the department directly, and put it on fix.bm too so there is a public record anyone can see. Read more about how it works.