The Citizen's Charter
| DOI | 10.1177/095207679400900108 |
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| Author | Diana Goldsworthy |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
budget allocation of 2.8 million ECU for the equal opportunities programme; the
Women’s Rights Committee in the Parliament called for a figure of 4.7 million:
&dquo;Parliament agreed with the Women’s Committee and called for an extra 1.9
The Citizen’s Charter
Diana Goldsworthy, Deputy Director, Citizen’s Charter Unit, OPSS
Introduction
Did you read about our Citizen’s Charter survey in the press in late August 1993.
This article is for the 3 out of 10 of you who - statistically - have never heard of
the Charter. I notice that the title of the parallel session includes the words
’beyond the rhetoric of the Citizen’s Charter’. I am too polite to ask what this
means. At the lowest it must mean that I am the one with the rhetoric. The
Charter has never been about rhetoric. It has been about delivery; the delivery of
better public services. That may be too simple for some. But it is that simple -
and that difficult.
The scale of the Charter
Let us remind ourselves what the Charter is all about. First, the sheer scale of
what we are trying to do. The Charter covers 5 million public servants - 1 in 5 of
the working population. It covers every school, every hospital, every police
station, every town hall, every government department and agency, every utility
company. They tell me this amounts to around 14,000 organisations. It is a huge
task. It is hardly surprising that we talk in terms of a 10 year programme.
Charter principles
Second, the principles. There are six:
Standards:
There must be explicit standards for the levels of service which
individual users of services can expect to receive, published in plain language in a
,.
form everyone can understand - and displayed at the point of delivery.
Consultation: Decision-makers must take account of the views of users in
setting service standards. Final decisions remain in the hands of Ministers, local
councillors etc., but the user must be heard.
Information: Full, accurate information must be readily available in plain
language about services, targets and results. Wherever possible this must be in
comparable form so that there is pressure to emulate the best and do better next year.
59
Openness:
The public should know whether or not the service is meeting
its standards and who is in charge. Public servants should normally wear name
badges when they meet the public and should give their names on the telephone
and in letters.
Complaints: Public servants must respond quickly and appropriately if they
fail to deliver the promised standard of service. There must be swift, user-
friendly, effective remedies if things go wrong.
.
value for money:
Public services must be run efficiently and give the
taxpayer good value for money. Improving quality is about not what you spend
but what you buy. There will always be a limit to the amount of money that any
nation can afford to spend on public services, so it is vital to make sure that
priorities are got right.
The simplicity, indeed the childlike nature of these principles should not
disguise their radical nature and their fundamental importance to the , delivery
programme. They can and do apply to every public service, interpreted and
tailored to fit each of the vast variety of individual service and their customers.
They are intended not as a straight jacket but as an enabling framework to ensure
that the exercise remains focused on results and does not get bogged down in
process.
Delivery
And then there is the...
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