Leicestershire Constabulary’s service delivery standards were developed after consulting the public. This allowed them to introduce standards in areas such as:

The Constabulary’s standards are published in local newspapers and public enquiry offices. 

5.11 If the service you provide is covered by a national charter, your local charter should take into account the national standards (see Chapter 2, paragraph 3). The service you provide may also be covered by other statutory standards which should be taken into account.

You need to think carefully about the wording of your charter.

Ayrshire Dumfries and Galloway Employment Service produced local Jobseeker’s and Employer’s Charters using the national charters as frameworks. But some of the standards are more testing than those in the national charters. For example, people who write to the service can expect a response within 5 working days as against the national standard of 10 days.

What are you promising?

5.12 You need to think carefully about the wording of your charter. It should make clear whether your users have a right to each standard that is enforceable through the courts or other means (for example a complaints procedure or independent review), or whether you simply aim to meet them as targets.

Enforceable right – a charter standard that applies to all users all of the time they use the service. It must be clear when the standard has not been met, and a remedy must be available. Either the provider must immediately put things right, or it must be possible for the user to enforce a remedy through a dispute resolution process (for example the courts, regulator, an ombudsman, or appeal panel).

Target – a level of service which the provider is aiming to provide, but which the user cannot always expect to receive, and for which a remedy is not necessarily available. A target that is likely to be unattainable more than 25% of the time should be changed.

You should be honest about what can be provided.

5.13 Whether your standards are rights or targets, you should make clear what happens if they are not met. If compensation is payable, you should state this clearly.

5.14 You might tell users that some standards may not be met if they fail to provide full and accurate information. But you need to be sure that your forms and instructions are clear and easily understood. Research shows that poorly designed forms and complicated procedures lead to mistakes.

Challenging

5.15 Although some aspects of providing a quality service cannot be easily quantified, your standards should be challenging but realistic. You should draw them up, where appropriate, by comparing them with those developed by comparable organisations in the UK, and where relevant, overseas. The Civil Service College has a database which can show organisations where they stand in relation to others, and provides contacts for further advice. See Annex C for details.You need to avoid raising unrealistic expectations of service, but at the same time do not be tempted to set standards that are easy to meet but offer no real improvement in service to your users. You will also need to avoid unintended results, for example focusing staff on easy cases at the expense of more difficult ones. You should be honest about what can be provided. Raising expectations unrealistically leads to frustration, which may in turn provoke rudeness or worse. It is important to involve users throughout and take account of their views.

Keep them simple

5.16 Your standards should be easy to understand and written in plain language.

Wandsworth Borough Council’s Leisure and Amenity Services Charter says that ‘We will remove fly tipped materials within 24 hours’ and ‘Each leisure centre’s weight training room will have at least 35 pieces of equipment’. Also, ‘We will fit all new and refurbished playgrounds with shock absorbing surfaces, fences to keep dogs out and self-closing gates’. Details are provided of whom users should contact if they have a complaint, and the charter states ‘If you are not happy about the way we have cleaned a street or park, we will clean it again.’

Measurable

5.17 Your standards should be measurable. There is no point telling people that they will be seen ‘quickly’ unless you tell people what this means and then monitor your performance. Monitoring your performance against your standards can be time consuming and costly, but is essential if you are to find out how your organisation is performing and identify areas for improvement. You will need to design systems that minimise the burden and are integrated with the collection of other information on performance. Gathering information electronically can be an effective way of achieving this.

Monitoring

5.18 Decide beforehand what action you will take if you do not meet the standards. Your own monitoring should be linked to audits and other quality monitoring procedures and to the decision-making processes in your organisation.

Ferrybridge Medical Centre in West Yorkshire prepared their charter using a steering group representative of the doctors, practice management, practice and community nurses and reception staff, in consultation with patients. Reviews of standards include staff consultation and regular patient surveys. Service enhancements to meet comments from patients have been introduced, for example a second telephone appointment line.

Gloucestershire Social Services developed their charter standards using a steering group made up of officers from social services, health, housing and user and carer representatives. A six-monthly performance information report is produced for discussion at user committees and staff meetings. A bi-annual survey keeps standards up-to-date and relevant to users. The department has set up its assessment procedures and forms in a way which allows them to monitor as many charter standards as possible by using information collected by staff.

5.19 In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of your service in an open and verifiable way, you should, wherever possible, arrange for an external organisation independently to validate your performance against your standards. You can use a number of methods such as user-satisfaction surveys, interviews, questionnaires, feedback cards and user groups. You will need to explain why you are collecting information and show that you are using it. This task could be undertaken by a statutory body or a commercial auditor, or you could ask a local university or Citizens Advice Bureau to give you some form of evaluation they have used themselves. You will need to consider the cost of such a move against the benefits to be gained. The outcome will vary between organisations. 

5.20 Mystery shopping is another method used by a number of organisations to test a wide range of service performance standards. Examples of ways in which local services have used mystery shopping can be found on the Cabinet Office’s Best Practice database via www.servicefirst.gov.uk

5.21 Publish information on your performance against standards for users and staff to see. Put it on posters and your website, in newsletters, leaflets, annual reports, and in your charter itself if possible (perhaps by means of an insert that could be updated annually). You should also publish changes to standards brought about as a result of monitoring performance.

Reviewing

5.22 You should not consider your standards to be permanently fixed and unchanging. You should regularly review them, and as you do so, you can update or change them. The way you collect information on performance, on both service standards and other indicators, should also be reviewed. Ensure you involve staff in the process; they may well have ideas on how standards might be improved, or why you are not meeting a standard and how this might be addressed. 

5.23 It is very important that top management receive regular reports on your performance against standards so that they can keep up to speed with developments and agree any appropriate follow-up action.