Introduction

Charter Mark is the Government's award to encourage and recognise excellence in public service delivery. It encourages organisations to try and provide better public services, and provides an important way through which local authority services can help to demonstrate best value in service delivery.

Charter Mark has been re-launched as part of the wider Service First programme, with a strong focus on service delivery to the customer. The Environmental Health profession is well placed to take advantage of this programme, with its long history and commitment to public service. Environmental Health Services continue to be one of the major sources for applications and one of the largest groups of award holders.

This guide has been produced by members of the Charter Mark winning Environmental Health Services quality network (En-Charter) to spread good practice and to help raise the quality of public services. It has been written by practitioners for practitioners, and complements the recent Service First Unit publication 'How to improve local authority regulatory services'. The guide is not prescriptive; rather it is for each authority to consider whether the practices described could be applied successfully to their particular circumstances. It is based around the ten Charter Mark criteria, although the guide also takes into account the principles and practices of good enforcement included in the central and local government Enforcement Concordat.

En-Charter

The En-Charter Group was formed to act as a network for those Environmental Health Services which had been successful in achieving the Charter Mark Award. One of the objectives of the group is to develop guidance on good practice in order to encourage and assist improvements, using the experience of network members.

Since its inception En-Charter has continued to grow, representing most of the Environmental Health Departments holding the award for all their services. Some of these awards also extend to Trading Standards services. In addition there are a number of other departments with the award for specific parts of their service.

The first edition of the good practice guide was launched at the Environmental Health Congress in 1996. The document was sent to every Head of Environmental Health Services and Chief Executive of all the Local Authorities in the United Kingdom. Since then a total of nearly 3,000 copies have been distributed to interested parties - not just from Environmental Health Services!

The Second Edition

In response to the many positive comments that we received, and following the recent changes to the Charter Mark scheme and the national Best Value initiative it was felt timely to produce a second edition of the guide. We have prepared the document based on the new 'Service First' Unit publication - 'How to apply for a Charter Mark 1999 - a guide for applicants', and on the comments received in response to the questionnaire that accompanied the first edition.

In this second edition of the good practice guide we have tried to retain the good points from the first edition and to respond to the comments of our readers particularly for more detailed examples. In compiling this document we have been fortunate to be able to draw on the experiences of the enlarged En-Charter group.

The majority of replies highly rated the first edition of the guide in respect of style, format and readability. The one respondent who gave it a very poor rating still requested five additional copies! Most of our readers, 96%, found the examples of excellence helpful and we have therefore tried to include more examples to illustrate what is possible. We recognise however that En-Charter members are not the sole, or necessarily original source, of these good practices. The examples must of necessity be brief so anyone wanting more information about a particular initiative is encouraged to contact a member of the group for further information and support.

Whether or not you intend to apply for the Charter Mark, and we would encourage any public service organisation to do so, we hope that the guide will stimulate discussion and encourage you to take a critical look at your services and the way in which you provide them.

Members of En-Charter with the generous support of the Service First Unit have produced this document. This has also enabled us to make the document available on the Service First Web site, which we hope will facilitate its use. It is hoped that further examples of good practice including, for example, survey forms can be made available in the future if there is sufficient demand.