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How to draw up a local charter
Contents
Chapter 3 - Getting Started
Key points
 | Have you planned ahead? |
| Have you identified who uses your service and decided how best to
involve them? |
| Do you know what aspects of your service matter most to users? |
| Have you considered how best to involve your staff and taken account
of their views on what the charter should cover? |
| Have you considered how to involve other local service providers? |
| Have you got commitment from top management? |
| Who will lead the work and what support will be made available to
them? |
| What are the resource implications – how much will it cost and how
much time will be involved? |
3.1 There is no one way of producing a local charter, but there is
plenty of help available. This includes existing charters and frameworks
for developing charters. You might find it useful to contact organisations
that have already produced their own local charter, or people involved in
their development. You will find some contacts in Annex B. The Quality
Networks referred to earlier may be able to help. You might also find it
useful to look at some of the documents listed in Annex C.
Plan ahead
3.2 When you develop your local charter, you will not necessarily be
starting from scratch. You, or colleagues, may have been involved already
in making improvements to your service and finding out what users want
from you. Build on this. Above all, you will want your users to value the
service described and your staff to be committed to delivering it.
3.3 Produce a plan of how to take the work forward. Ensure that your
staff are fully involved. You
will need to identify and consult your users and find out what they want
to see included in your local charter (see Chapter 4 – Consulting and
involving people). The support of staff and users is critical.
3.4 Think about how your charter will fit with any communications and
performance management systems that are already in place in your
organisation or are being developed. For example, a local charter could be
one of the mechanisms for explaining how a local authority is working
towards Best Value, including:
| when the performance of specific services will be reviewed; |
| what performance targets, national and local, have been set; and |
| how users are being consulted and how this will help set targets and
improve services. |
3.5 You will also need to do the following:
get support from your top management. Their commitment to
creating a culture that supports a clear focus on users’ needs is
essential in getting the process off the ground and needs to be obtained
at the earliest opportunity. Support from management should include
agreement to commit resources, time and equipment. Local authorities need
the support of elected members. You are likely to be competing for
resources with other priorities, and will need to put forward a strong,
convincing case outlining the benefits of a local charter for you and your
users. This might include an outline of how much it will cost to develop,
produce and implement. The guidance on "Involving users: Improving
the delivery of local public services" and its four companion case
study reports confirm that there are real benefits and cost savings to be
made;
allocate responsibility for preparing and implementing the
charter. Developing the charter is a collaborative process, and
should involve staff, users and others. However, you should ensure that
people are identified to undertake key tasks such as managing the process,
carrying out the consultation exercises, analysing comments, negotiating
new delivery systems if necessary and gathering and discussing performance
information, and that someone has overall responsibility for preparing and
implementing the charter. This person should have ready access to top
management. You might consider employing someone who has had experience of
using the type of services you provide to help you produce your charter;
consider producing cross-sectoral charters. You
may want to produce cross-sectoral charters, if you are dealing with issues like services for
young people, the elderly, or community care. This sort of local charter
can help different groups providing public services to target particular
areas of need, for example, health improvement at a local level through
the involvement of the local health council, health board, GPs, local
authority, voluntary services and local people; and
work out the time and cost involved and draw up a
timetable. You will need to work out how much time will be
involved in meetings with staff and users and think about whether you
already have the training and information systems you need. Producing a
charter can take a long time, especially when it cuts across a number of
sectors (for example, a community care charter will need to involve
health, housing, social services departments and voluntary organisations).
Allow enough time to produce the charter, brief staff on its use, and
launch it. If more than one agency is involved, allow for the extra time
that the process might take. The "Involving users: improving the
delivery of local public services" guide and its companion reports
contain information on time spent and costs incurred in developing
charters and action plans. If you are developing a cross-sectoral
charter, you will need to discuss the cost implications with relevant
services. You will also need to estimate the costs of printing,
advertising and sending out your charter, and any costs associated with
postponing other work. You could look at the possibilities of getting
sponsorship for your charter to help with costs.
Writing a charter is just the beginning
3.6 Your charter will develop over time. But from the start you will
need to think about how you will:
| produce a charter that you can deliver; |
| make sure you are setting the right standards; |
| develop systems to measure how you carry out your charter
commitments; |
| let your users and staff know how you are performing and what you
are doing to improve things; and |
| provide a remedy if you do not meet the standards set out in your
charter. |
Sutton Coldfield College has had its Charter since 1993. The Charter is
reviewed each year along with the levels of service provided in
consultation with staff and users. The nine sections cover:
| Contacting the College |
| Applying to the College |
| On joining the College |
| On programme while at College |
| On completion |
| How to deal with problems |
| Employers services |
| The community |
| Student responsibilities |
Where possible the Charter refers to measurable targets for the levels
of service that students, prospective employers and neighbours of the
College are entitled to expect. |
