Senra Radar vs mySociety: what is the actual difference?

mySociety is a charity, not a product company. It has been building civic-technology tools for the UK public since 2003 and runs some of the most genuinely useful websites in British government: FixMyStreet, WhatDoTheyKnow, TheyWorkForYou, and a research arm called mySociety Research.

Senra Radar relies on mySociety. FixMyStreet data is one of the eleven sources Radar aggregates, and it would not exist in its current form without mySociety’s work over two decades. So this is not a competitive comparison; it is a “when should you use each one” guide, written by someone who uses mySociety’s tools every day.

What mySociety’s tools do, in one line each

Tool	One-line description
FixMyStreet	Residents report street issues (potholes, fly-tipping, lighting) to the right council; reports are public.
WhatDoTheyKnow	File Freedom of Information requests publicly; every response is archived.
TheyWorkForYou	Search Hansard, see how MPs voted, read committee transcripts.
WriteToThem	Find and write to your elected representatives at any level.
mySociety Research	Published research on local democracy, climate action plans, Freedom of Information practice.

Every one of these tools does what it says with exceptional care. The FixMyStreet interface in particular has been copied by dozens of councils around the world.

What Radar does with mySociety’s data

Radar pulls FixMyStreet reports for each ward it covers and combines them with planning, crime, property sales, food hygiene, EPC energy ratings, stop-and-search, road accidents, parliamentary petitions, and DfT Street Manager planned roadworks. The value Radar adds is not producing new data: it is bringing eleven existing sources into one ward-level view, clipped to the actual polygon boundary, with a map and search.

The practical difference for a councillor: looking at FixMyStreet on its own, you see street issue reports. Looking at Radar, you see the same FixMyStreet reports alongside the planning application three streets over, the cluster of F-rated rental properties on the adjacent road, and the recent crime records at the same junction. That lets you see correlations across data types that single-source tools cannot show.

Where mySociety is stronger

Three areas where a councillor should go direct to mySociety, not to Radar:

• Filing FOI requests. WhatDoTheyKnow is the correct tool for this. It handles the delivery, keeps a public record, and makes the response searchable for everyone. Radar does not file FOI requests and does not plan to.
• National Parliament work. TheyWorkForYou is the best tool in the country for looking at MP voting records, reading Hansard, and tracking committee transcripts. Radar covers local, not national.
• Submitting a report as a resident. FixMyStreet is the tool residents use to submit street issue reports. Radar reads those reports; it does not replace them. If a resident wants to report a pothole, they should use FixMyStreet directly.

Where Radar is stronger

Three areas where Radar is the right tool:

• Cross-source ward intelligence. If you want to see planning, crime, street issues, housing conditions, and sales on the same map, you need an aggregation layer. mySociety does not do this; Radar does.
• Boundary-accurate filtering. FixMyStreet is categorised by council, not by ward. Radar clips to the actual ward polygon, which matters for councillors who represent a defined patch inside a larger authority area.
• CSV exports for campaign planning. Radar lets you export the data you are looking at. This is useful for ward newsletters, canvass planning, and shared documents with campaign teams.

An honest note on funding models

mySociety is a charity, funded by donations, grants, and consulting income. Its tools are free and always will be. Radar is a small commercial project that is free for sitting councillors and candidates and paid for borough-wide teams and organisations. The two projects are complementary, not competitive.

If you can afford to donate to mySociety, you should. It is some of the most publicly valuable software infrastructure in British civil society and it operates on a fraction of what equivalent commercial products cost.