How to draw up a National Charter

This information is being maintained for archive/historical purposes.
It will not be updated.
Please see http://archive.cabinet-office.gov.uk for details.

The Service First and Modernising Government programmes have now been completed. The information held on this site is no longer being maintained but is retained for archive purposes.

To learn about reform of public services, you may find the following sites useful:

Prime Minister’s Office of Public Service Reform
Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit
Civil Service Reform
Charter Mark Website

If you work in the public sector, you can access our good practice database and other useful information via the Public Sector Benchmarking Service.

Next chapter | Contents page

Foreword

By the Minister for Public Service

This Government is committed to improving public services and making them more responsive to their users. We support the idea that each area of public service should have a charter setting out the standard of service users can expect. It is, after all, only right that people should know what they will get from the services for which they pay.

But, in the past, too many charters were drawn up from the top down, and there was little or no consultation with those who used the services. Too many were vague and unspecific. Too many focused on things that were easy to measure, and failed to get at the heart of what was important to their users. In short, they did not put the user first.

As part of our programme for modernising public services, we have decided to produce this guide to drawing up national charters. We hope that it will improve the quality of charters that cover national services, and make them more meaningful to the people who use them. Key features include:

	users and front-line staff should be involved in a charter's development;
	there should be a strong focus on quality;
	charters should look at services through the user's eyes and not simply reflect organisational structure;
	performance against charter standards should be effectively reviewed and monitored, and the results published;
	charters should be regularly reviewed and updated.

Charters are a tool for improving services. We want them to be used as such. We want people - both users and providers - to see them as a practical means of achieving improvement in the services that are delivered to millions every day. We hope this guide will be a step in that direction.

Peter Kilfoyle

Next chapter | Contents page