McCARTNEY LAUNCHES  'OPEN ALL HOURS' 

CHANGING TIMES TO PUT CITIZENS FIRST

Ian McCartney today visited Slough NHS Walk-in Centre to launch Open All Hours, a report which highlights extended opening hours for public service.

Open All Hours has been produced in an easy-to-read magazine style to help bring the modernising government agenda to life and to recognise genuine progress to make services more accessible to the public.

Cabinet Office Minister, Ian McCartney said the report was mainly aimed at helping to encourage the public sector to continue to innovate to give citizens the best deal.

Mr McCartney said: "The government is committed to putting customers first. Last year we asked one thousand British people which public services they wanted to access out-of-hours and how they wanted to contact those services.

"They told us they wanted services to be available in the mornings, evenings and at weekends, as well as during normal office hours. They wanted to be able to access a wide range of public services by phone, in person or electronically. Few thought that services, other than emergency health services, needed to be available round-the-clock.

"Open All Hours shows just some of the progress that has been made to meet the demand for new service hours. There are some hugely impressive examples. But the work doesn't stop here, Modernising government is an on-going programme of reform."

Open All Hours gives just a taster of the many innovative ways public service is responding to the needs of customers. Examples include:

NHS Direct, a round the clock service offering personalised health advice, accredited information on hundreds of conditions and treatments and even "ask-an-expert" sessions.

Employment Service Direct - a quick and easy phone service that helps customers find full- and part-time jobs.

Welcoming the "first rate" examples in the report, the Prime Minister says in a foreword:

"The services in this booklet show what can be done. The challenge now is to raise the standards in all our public services to those of the best."