How to draw up a local charter

Contents

Chapter 6 Putting things right 

Key points

Does your charter:

6.1 It is essential that you have in place effective mechanisms for dealing with complaints and other feedback. Your charter should say that you welcome comments and complaints as useful feedback, that all will be investigated fairly, and that you will learn lessons from them. You should also say that you want to find out what users like about the service, so that you can make sure these aspects of your service are maintained. Take care to avoid using any language that could be seen as threatening or off-putting. If your organisation is part of a larger one and you have a corporate complaints procedure, you should consider whether it needs to be adapted to your particular service. As well as formal complaints, you should have a simple system to deal with informal ones. Often informal complaints are concerns and comments that are raised orally and are dealt with immediately on the spot.

Explain what will happen if you do not meet the standards in your charter. 

6.2 You should explain what will happen if you do not meet the standards in your charter. Will your users get an apology, can they appeal, or get compensation? If compensation is available, you should explain how users can get it: will it be paid automatically, or will they need to put in a claim? 

Explain who people should complain to if you do not meet the standards, and what can be done to put their complaint right. Involve your users. Ask people to say what remedy they want as a result of their complaint and ensure for example that their understanding of an apology is the same as your own. You also need to report regularly and publicise what action you have taken in response to complaints. And you should report each year on the amount of compensation paid.

Riverside Housing Association Customer Charter says that if any customer at any time feels that the Association is failing to meet the responsibilities described within the customer charter then they canuse the complaints procedure. It also stresses that independent advice is available.

St Mary’s College, Northern Ireland Charter explains that the college runs a ‘school concerns clinic’ for parents on the first and third Tuesday evening of every month. The headmistress (or if she is away a senior member of staff) can deal with any concerns parents may have. Parents can also get a school concerns form at reception, and concerns are dealt with within 5 working days.

Aberdeen College’s Clients’ Charter includes a complaints procedure in which complaints are monitored on a sample basis by an independent panel. 

6.3 Include your complaints procedure in your charter, set out in stages, with named points of contact and contact details. Tell people how long each stage will take and that they will be kept informed of progress. Ensure confidentiality. You should, if possible, give people enough information to use the complaints procedure without referring them to another document. It may, however, not be practical to include all the details about your complaints procedure in your charter. Too much information can be confusing and result in a lengthy document. In this case, you may need to refer users to a separate complaints leaflet for further information. 

6.4 Set out the timetable for dealing with complaints (for example, time limits for providing acknowledgements and full replies). You could, for example, aim to acknowledge complaints within 5 working days, and reply in full within 15 working days. But set quicker deadlines, if you can.

Mid and West Wales Fire Brigade’s Charter includes details of their complaints procedure. All complaints can be registered at the nearest divisional headquarters or direct at Brigade Headquarters. They acknowledge all complaints in writing within 2 working days, where possible by a personal visit or a telephone call, and fully investigate the complaints. The results of the investigation are sent to the person who complained within 2 working weeks. If the investigation cannot be sorted out within this time, they send written confirmation of this along with an explanation of why more time is needed.

6.5 Explain the role of your organisation’s chief executive (or equivalent) in your complaints procedure. You should also include information on how a person might take an unresolved complaint to their own MP, the relevant ombudsman or another form of independent review. You will need to check first whether the independent reviewer investigates actual complaints (some only check that the system is operating correctly). If you refer to any ombudsman or another reviewer, you should provide a contact address and phone number (see Annex C for details). Remember that there may be more than one ombudsman.

6.6 Everyone should be able to use your complaints procedure. You should publish it on paper and, if you have one, on your web site on the Internet. You may also be able to receive and reply to complaints and suggestions by e-mail. Consider how best to inform those of your users who may be disabled or cannot read or speak English, or have difficulty reading or writing.

The London Borough of Camden has produced an Internet guide to complaining. It gives clear and simple advice on how to complain about a range of local services (including canal services, landlords, government agencies etc) and goods and services purchased from high street traders. To help people complain about a council service, an on-line complaint form is provided to help ensure that complaints are passed quickly to the appropriate complaints officer. The website address is www.camden.gov.uk  

6.7 Complaints are a good source of information on how your organisation is performing. Keep a record of all complaints and the issues raised. Regularly report this information to senior managers, and act on it to improve services. Tell users what action you have taken.

6.8 Remember to encourage compliments as well as complaints. Give users the opportunity to provide positive feedback on the service they have received, and to praise particular members of staff. Invite their views on how the service they use might be improved. Provide named points of contact and contact details (including email addresses where possible). Make sure that they can do this on any comments or complaints forms you produce. If you have a website then it should include a facility whereby readers can provide you with comments. 

6.9 The Cabinet Office guide on complaints handling ‘How to deal with complaints’ gives you further information on how to set up good complaints procedures. Copies are available by calling 0845 7 22 32 42

Chapter 7 Working with other service providers 

Key points

In developing your charter, have you:

7.1 Better government will only come about if institutional barriers between public services are broken down. After all, few, if any, public services can operate in complete isolation. People often have to approach a number of different public services to get what they want. All too often they are let down because their path between different public service providers has not been adequately considered and prepared.

7.2 In developing your charter, you should involve other relevant service providers. If you are unsure who they are, then consult your users. Consider how you might improve the links with other services so that your users receive the best possible overall service. You should:

Make sure your systems make it easy for people to help you.

In addition to information on service standards and complaints, the Oxfordshire Trading Standards’ website contains contact details for a wide range of related services. The website address is www.oxon-tss.org.uk 

7.3 If there is a sufficiently strong link between your service and that of others then you may wish to go even further. Liaise with other providers and consider whether you can present your services in a way that emphasises the overall service the user will receive rather than the individual elements contributed by each of the providers. Where possible, focus on a user’s "life event" (eg giving birth or learning to drive) rather than organisational boundaries. 

Service users in the Doncaster area who receive visits at home from various healthcare organisations have a clear statement of the quality of service they can expect from the visiting organisations. A set of eight standards have been developed jointly by Doncaster Healthcare and South Humberside NHS Trust, Doncaster Royal and Montague NHS Trust, Doncaster Health Authority and Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council. The standards are on prominent display for staff, and given in leaflet form to users on the first visit. An appointed officer, in one of the Trusts, monitors performance against the standards for the staff of all four organisations.

7.4 It may be possible for you and the other providers to produce a joint charter focusing on the needs of a particular group eg community care charters. But it is important to note that simply ‘bolting together’ two or more separate charters will often result in a long, complex document with no appreciable improvement in the service provided to the user. You should first try to develop a common approach to the services that will underpin the joint charter, for example common standards or complaints procedures.

Wolverhampton Council’s Community Care Charter was jointly prepared by Wolverhampton Council, Wolverhampton Health Authority, Wolverhampton Community Care Forum and Wolverhampton Health Care NHS Trust, as well as users and carers. A lead person was identified for each section of the charter, and a project group was set up tooversee production of the charter.

7.5 As noted in chapter 5, you will need to consider the best way of collecting information on service standards and how this fits in with other information collected to measure your partnership’s performance. Funding may be available to support new ways of sharing information among partners from the Invest to Save Budget, managed by the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. Details of this scheme can be found on the Cabinet Officewebsite (www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/eeg/1999/isb). As projectswhich have been funded by the Invest to Save Budget come on stream, this website will provide links to information on joint working and how these projects are improving the delivery ofpublic sector services.

7.6 Some case studies on how various partnerships have tackled performance measurement are available on the Measurement and Performance Project website (www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/eeg/1999/map). This website, and the Service First website (www.servicefirst.gov.uk) contain, and provide links to, much relevant information. If you do not have access to the Internet but would like to know more then the Cabinet Office will be able to assist (contact details at Annex C).