A street committee is three or four residents who agree to speak for a street. There is no election, no constitution and no money, and the ward's only involvement is to keep a list of who to contact.
Why they work. One resident reporting a blocked drain four times is a persistent resident. A street committee reporting it with four reference numbers, dates and the names of nine households is a document the ward can send to the city and the city can act on. Nine of the eleven committees have got city work moved up in the last two years.
They are also how the ward finds things out. The desk hears from about one household in twenty. A committee hears from all of them, and three of the last five changes the ward made to parking bays came from a committee telling us we had it wrong.
To start one: bring three names and a street to the desk, or send them through the form. That is the whole process. The ward will add you to the list, send the agenda of every meeting to your contact, and answer a committee letter within five working days rather than the usual ten.
The ward does not fund committees and will not, because the two that asked for a budget wanted it for things the ward would have done anyway, and money would turn a useful informal thing into a committee with accounts.