You don't need to know how the city works.
It's enough that you know what's wrong.

Localt is a free tool that figures out who at the City of Helsinki is responsible for a problem or idea. You describe the issue in your own words. If something is broken, Localt shows the right fault-report service. If you want the city to decide something differently, it shows which committee decides and gives you a wall where you can add a short, anonymous line and see whether others have the same problem.

You write what's wrong in a sentence or two, like you would explain it to a friend. Localt works out whether it's a maintenance issue, a policy question, a legal or personal matter, a new idea, or something the State decides rather than the city. Then it shows you who's responsible. For a policy question you see the committee and its wall, where you can read other lines, mark the ones that affect you too, or add your own. For a fault you're pointed to the right service and make the report yourself.

Every committee that decides on city matters has its own wall. It holds short, anonymous lines that residents have chosen to share, such as “Libraries should be open on Sundays.” You can read them, mark the ones that affect you too with “This affects me too”, or add a line of your own. Localt compiles the most-marked lines per committee and sends them on to the committee by hand, without names. We can't promise the committee reads them or does anything with them. The numbers are markings made in Localt, a rough guide and not a measurement.

It depends on the issue, which is exactly the problem Localt solves. Broken streetlights, potholes, graffiti, and fallen trees go through the city's regular fault-report service. A parking fine has its own appeal process and a deadline. A noise complaint about a neighbor or a building site goes to a different part of the city than noise from traffic. Describe what's wrong on Localt and it tells you exactly where it goes.

Yes. It's free, and you don't need to create an account.

No. Localt never sends anything in your name. For a fault it shows you the right service and you make the report yourself. On the wall you add a short line without your name, and Localt sends the most-marked lines to the committee by hand.

No. Localt is an independent tool, not an official channel of the City of Helsinki. It uses the city's own published decision-making data, from paatokset.hel.fi, to point you to the right place.

We don't store who you are, and we don't store any text about you. What you write is sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, to find the right body and create a draft, and Anthropic deletes it within 30 days. There's no account, no login, no cookies. We count visits with Vercel Web Analytics (pages viewed, country, referring site, browser and device type), without cookies or profiles, and the counts are never linked to what you write. To tell people from automated scripts, Vercel BotID checks that a question comes from a real browser. The check looks at the browser, not at what you write. To answer faster, we briefly cache searches of the decisions register in hashed form before they're automatically deleted. We also store the city's own public decision headings and meeting dates for 12 months, taken from the city's open decisions register and meeting calendar. They contain no personal data and never anything you wrote. If you choose to share a short line with others in your area or under a body, only that line and which body or area it belongs to is saved, never what you wrote. Localt regularly compiles the most marked lines per body and sends them on to the body by hand, without names. The members of the bodies (name, role and party) are shown as the city itself publishes them and are fetched once a week. We never store or show email addresses, pictures or phone numbers. If you send feedback and tick the box “include what I wrote”, your question is kept for 60 days; otherwise it is never saved. If you yourself leave your name, email address and an optional message on the page where you can ask us to get in touch or join as an early member, we store them only to contact you and do not pass them on. Your exact location in the area view stays in your own browser, but the map is fetched from OpenStreetMap, which sees your IP address.

It is entirely optional and off by default. The AI suggests a short, neutral line without names or addresses. You can change it and must approve it yourself, and it is checked once more before it is saved. Only that line is saved, along with what kind of matter it was, which body or organisation it went to and which area. What you wrote and your exact location are never saved. It is not offered at all for personal matters. Anyone can flag a line without giving anything about themselves, and after three flags it is hidden until we have looked at it.

It shows that this affects you too. Instead of many people writing the same thing, they gather behind one item. The number on an item is how many markings have been made in Localt, a rough guide and not a measurement, and one person may have marked more than once. The marking is saved with no link to you. So that the same computer can't press it over and over, we keep a hash of your IP address, the item and a secret value that changes every day, for at most a day. The address itself is never stored, we can't see it in the hash, and the hash is deleted automatically. Localt doesn't send anything for you.

Finnish, Swedish, and English, so you can describe your concern in whichever one you're most comfortable with.

Yes, but differently. If what you write touches your own health, care, or benefits, Localt recognizes that and points you to the correct official, statutory process. A matter like that never goes to a politician, and it is not offered as a line for the wall either.

Localt uses AI to match your concern to the right contact, and AI can get things wrong. Every answer links to its source on paatokset.hel.fi, so you can check it yourself before you send anything.