Citizen's Charter Research Articles

Needs: Resources and Abhorrent Choices

In every field of welfare provision, but particularly in the case of the chronically sick and disabled, there is a growing tide of need and competition for services which cannot be met by existing resources. Spiralling populations of elderly persons with increased life expectancy have exacerbated this problem.' Treating people in the community, a goal2 which has been perceived by central government to provide a comparatively less expensive way of delivering care, has provided the impetus for a move away from institutional 'care' to community 'care'.3 This policy, however, has not been presented as a purely cost driven exercise. Instead, the movement has been accompanied by language which has emphasised choice and the meeting of individual need. Indeed, escalating costs have not dampened the rhetoric. Despite the gap between the availability of resources and expectation-led demand, central government continued to place emphasis on the paramountcy of consumer choice. While Department of Health circulars and policy guidelines are replete with cautionary statements, which advise local authorities to keep within the limits of available resources, notions of choice, consumer sovereignty and entitlements have been more prominent and more public in documents such as the Citizens Charter and the Government White Paper, Caring for People: Community Care in the Next Decade and

Complaints Within Constraints: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Citizen's Charter Complaints Task Force

In June 1993 a Task Force within the Citizen's Charter Unit of the Cabinet Office initiated a review of complaints procedures in public sector organisations. Its work included an appraisal of private sector complaints handling practice to see if there were any lessons that could be usefully applied to the public sector. Its Main Report (1995) contained a number of interesting observations, some of which appear to challenge the logic of the structural reforms to the public sector. Effective complaints mechanisms require that all complaints, including those pertaining to policy, need to be dealt with by those who deliver services. A commitment to implementing the Task Force's recommendations would have resource implications and would involve changes in organisational culture and management style including the empowerment of front-line personnel. In terms of empowering citizens however, the Task Force's impact is likely to be minimal due to the constraints within which delivery agencies operate.

Managing and evaluating customer complaint procedures in local government

Presents edited versions of the proceedings of the Second World Congress for Total Quality Management in Great Britain in 1997. Effective customer complaints handling in British local government; Self-assessment; Citizen's Charter Complaints Task Force

Museums & Galleries Commission Standards in the Care of Museums Collections; what are the implications?

tandards are still fashionable. The Citizens Charter may be quietly fading away, but there are plenty of other Standards taking its place in seemingly every sphere of life. Total Quality Management and Investors in People are at one end of the scale, British or European or International Standards for electrical wiring, if you like, at the other end.

Book Reviews: The Citizen's Charter

Book Reviews: The Citizen's Charter

The Commission on the Future of Voluntary Action, Meeting the Challenge of Change: Voluntary Action Into the 21st Century, NCVO, London, 1996, 130 pp., £20.00 paper.

Traditionally, when government wants to stall on a difficult but politically pressing issue, it establishes a Royal Commission (a technique little used by the bulldozer governments of the Thatcher era). However, despite the widely acknowledged (albeit with differing emphases) political significance of the voluntary sector, there has been no recent government incursion of this kind into the world of the voluntary sector. The only recent public government commentary has been The Individual and the Community which, in 1992, appeared both as part of the Majorite broad push on the Citizen's Charter and a flagging up of his government's desire (during the review of charity law, and the introduction of the community care reforms) to pull the voluntary sector further into the welfare market dominated by the three Es; as Barry Knight has put it, to encompass the ‘delivery of state objectives through voluntary means’.

Using the Citizen's Charter Mark to Measure the Quality of Service to the Public by a Physiotherapy Service

The Citizen’s Charter Mark is an award for public organisations which provide an excellent service. A Charter Mark means the organisation has demonstrated that it puts its users first. The nine criteria that are assessed are standards; information and openness; consultation and choice; courtesy and helpfulness; putting things right; value for money; user satisfaction; measurable improvements in the last two years; and an innovative improvement with no additional cost.

National Libraries and the Citizen's Charter

National Libraries and the Citizen's Charter

Citizen Major? The Rationale and Impact of The Citizen's Charter

John Major's introduction of the Citizen's Charter in July 1991 was intended to mark a watershed in the provision of public services in the United Kingdom. Its subsequent evolution has attracted international attention and, according to the Government, the Charter, although less than half-way through its ten-year timescale, has resulted in significant improvements in public service delivery and has been instrumental in effecting a cultural change in the attitudes of public service personnel. These improvements have occurred within the context of a much wider series of measures pursued by Conservative Governments since 1979, all of which have resulted in a radically transformed public sector. The real significance of the Charter, however, is not easily reconciled with Governmental rhetoric. This paper defines the Charter programme and evaluates its rationale and impact.

Quality Management for Information and Library Managers

I Introduction to quality concepts 1. why does quality matter? 2. the quality gurus 3. ISO 9000 4. the customer perspective 5. the quality awards 6. the citizen's charter: a government approach to quality management 7. total quality management II libraries, information services and quality 8. libraries and quality: recent research and applications 9. defining purpose: the mission of the library 10. comparing library and information services: statistics, standards and guidelines 11. models of library effectiveness 12. systematic performance measurement for libraries and information services 13. contracting out and charters for libraries 14. implementing quality management: from theory to action.

Antistatist Reforms and New Administrative Directions: Public Administration in the United Kingdom

Compared with the United States, the United Kingdom is a strong unitary state. There are few constitution constraints on the central executive; that executive is controlled by one, highly disciplined political party; that same party is usually able to dominate the proceedings o the legislature. The government of the d is accustomed to being able to get more than 90 percent of its legislation through Parliament unscathed (Rose, 1989). It is also able to constrain the activities of local governments to a degree which would be regarded as extraordinary in many other liberal democracies. When, during the mid-1980s, Mrs. Thatcher fell out with Labour-controlled authorities in the largest metropolitan areas, including London, she simply abolished them (Mather, 1989). Such executive freedoms must have appeared luxurious indeed to most American presidents. This is, therefore, a state in which the musculature of the central executive is well developed--some would say overdeveloped. During the period of one party (Conservative) rule since 1979, these muscles have been flexed to considerable effect. More than 60 percent of the civil service presently works in executive agencies of a kind that scarcely existed 5 years ago. Market-type-mechanisms (MTMs) have been introduced to the National Health Service (NHS) in community care. Prime Minister Major's Citizen's Charter program for quality standards has left few public services untouched. Local government is in the throes of restructuring. Large-scale privatization has taken place extensive further market testing is underway. Although the scale of these movements is unmistakable, their significance remains a matter for debate. Are they signs of the strong heartedness of the British state of the Conservative government's willingness to modernize adapt public sector institutions? Alternatively, is the government displaying a weak-hearted acceptance of continuing economic decline or (even) a deep doctrinal prejudice against the public sector? Are we witnessing bold modernization or an unsubtle mixture of demoralization demolition? The last may sound far-fetched, yet there is persistent evidence that ministerial hearts are unsympathetic to the public sector (Pollitt, 1993; 35-48). Many commentators agree that Mrs. Thatcher and her close circle of ideological confidants saw themselves as the prize crew of a hostile vessel (James, 1993; 504-505). Indeed, sometimes it has seemed that the public sector was guilty until proven innocent, While the private sector was innocent until proven guilty. Although such a stance has become familiar in American politics, it remains much less common in Europe, where the state is still widely seen as an indispensable force for integration the promotion of social welfare. Recent Changes in the State Public Administration With some oversimplification, the period since Mrs. Thatcher's coming to power in 1979 can be divided into three phases. First, from 1979 to about 1982 there was a fierce but relatively crude drive for economies. This corresponded with the government's macroeconomic policy objective of reducing public expenditure. Originally, this aim was formulated as one of making real cuts in total spending, but bitter experience obliged ministers progressively to reformulate their objectives in less draconian terms (Thain Wright, 1992; 219). Even so, civil service numbers were cut by 14 percent (from 1979 levels) subsequently by a further 6 percent. Civil service pay was brought under tighter ministerial control, the Civil Service Department was abolished. Some major departments of state suffered severe cuts in their programs, especially those concerned with housing, the environment, industry, energy. Central government also embarked on a series of new legislative measures designed to tighten its grip on local authority expenditure. The limitations of such a strategy were apparent from the beginning, the government soon moved to emphasize efficiency rather than economy. …

Waste Management Licensing: Challenges for Waste Regulation Authorities

ABSTRACTThe introduction of a new and strengthened Environ‐ mental Protection Act 1990 waste management licensing system in May 1994 presented waste regulation authorities in England and Wales with important challenges in respect to the technical and legal issues surrounding this work. However, other important strategies and policies, a system of fees and charges which implements the ‘polluter pays’ principle, and initiatives relating to the Citizens Charter and market testing, may have a more profound impact on waste regulation authorities and require a fundamental reappraisal of their strategies.The author argues that waste regulation authorities need to develop a marketing approach to the development of their strategies and policies in the future, if they are to satisfy their customers and provide the excellent service which is expected of them.

The New Right Conception of Citizenship and the Citizen's Charter

MANY COMMENTATORS HAVE VIEWED THE CITIZEN'S CHARTER programme as a cynical exercise, having little to do with either the political participation one associates with citizenship or the establishment of a general bill of rights in the manner of the great Charters of the past. Although these criticisms possess some force, they fail to recognize that a distinctive conception of citizenship and rights underlies the initiative. In section one, we give an outline of this view of the citizen and trace its origins in the New Right critique of the social-democratic theory that predominated during the post-war period. This exercise forms a necessary preliminary both for understanding the objectives of the policy, the task of section two, and for assessing its coherence and plausibility, the aim of section three. We shall conclude that the scheme fails because it either substitutes the market for the state where it is inappropriate or omits to do so where it might provejustified. In these respects, the combination of politics and markets from the mixed-economy perspective of the social democratic conception of citizenship may well be superior.

HAVING THE BUN AND THE HALFPENNY: CAN OLD PUBLIC SERVICE ETHICS SURVIVE IN THE NEW WHITEHALL?

The past few years have seen major changes in Whitehall. These include: the encouragement of business values; the erosion of the idea of a career civil service; the Citizen's Charter; the growth of Next Steps agencies; market testing; the rise of political patronage and tensions in ministerial/official relationships. The official view is that this is an evolution of a former tradition and that the old public service ethos can continue. This seems doubtful. At all events there are widely differing normative, evaluations of the recent developments. The article concludes by offering some more historical reflections about the significance of the developments in the context of British public administration.

AUDITING PERFORMANCE INDICATORS: THE ROLE OF THE AUDIT COMMISSION IN THE CITIZEN'S CHARTER INITIATIVE

The Citizen's Charter Initiative gave the Audit Commission an important role in designing and overseeing the audit of local authority performance indicators, as well as in publishing comparative information. This paper examines the way in which the Commission and local authority auditors have approached their new tasks and assesses the problems they may encounter as suggested by the literature on performance measurement. The findings indicate that the objectives for reporting performance have not been clearly defined and appear to be moving the public sector in the reverse direction from the private sector.

Never the Twain Shall Meet: TQM versus the Citizen's Charter

Never the Twain Shall Meet: TQM versus the Citizen's Charter

Civil service and democracy: Questions in reforming the civil service in eastern and central Europe

AbstractThe debate over public service reform is taking place at a time of flux when old models are being challenged everywhere. This article discusses issues of institutional transfer, as between western and east and central Europe, relative to civil service reform and democratisation. It presents several models to describe the place of the civil service in the democratic state and the implications of each for civil service organisation. It argues for a better balance between a legal approach, which tends to dominate advice coming from some continental European countries, and one which emphasises ‘good’ rather than just ‘correct’ relations between administration and citizens. This distinction is fundamental in so far as, under the UK Citizens Charter for example, the citizen is seen as a ‘customer’ rather than a mere ‘user’ of services he has no influence over. The article concludes that, given the differences in culture, political climate and economic situation of ‘recipient’ countries in east and central Europe, each must search for its own reforms, looking for questions rather than answers.

Rushcliffe Fifty Years on: The Changing Role of Civil Legal Aid within the Welfare State

The last few years have been difficult ones for legal aid. As the government abolishes the contributory green forms scheme, increases contributions, and holds down pay rates, the President of the Law Society has accused it of crippling a 'once proud public service'.' At the same time, the number of cases dealt with by the scheme and the cost per case continue to increase.2 Legal Action Group has described the current state of legal aid as 'stagflation'.3 Increased use of legal aid and rising costs are combined with decreasing eligibility, morale, and belief. Why is it that each year the legal aid scheme appears to deal less well with the increasing demands made upon it? This chapter looks back over the last fifty years of civil legal aid, to chart its varied fortunes within the welfare state. It argues that the changing philosophies of welfare have shaped both the structure of the scheme, and the demands made upon it. At the same time as governments have confined direct welfare services to the poor to the neglect of those of moderate means they have put greater emphasis on individual 'consumer' action as a means of regulating welfare providers. Thus, the early 1980s saw the expansion of rights enforced through courts and tribunals, though by the end of the decade the emphasis had shifted to internal complaints systems and formal complaints handlers, such as regulators, ombudsmen, and inspectors. Legal aid has failed to keep pace with either development. Private solicitors have traditionally ignored welfare issues; the scheme fails to pay for representation before most tribunals; and the varied advice needs raised by the Citizen's Charter approach have been ignored. The welfare state is a difficult concept, as the meanings attaching to the term have changed markedly since the Second World War. In 1945 it was an aspirational depiction of a new kind of state: by the 1960s it was a label applied to specific, central, public bureaucracies.4 Now it is often used to describe a minor and residual function of a state primarily concerned with other matters. For the purposes of the present discussion, the welfare state

Accentuating the apostrophe: The citizen's charter

Accentuating the apostrophe: The citizen's charter

Government plans local care charters

Local charters to improve the quality of community care services in individual local authorities throughout England are proposed in a consultation document from the health department. The government has already introduced a national citizen's charter but this latest move aims to allow each local social services authority to set and monitor its …