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Getting it right, and righting the wrongs

Communities Minister Shahid Malik today (Wednesday, 17 June) called on all local councils to get it right first time to ensure the public receive the modern service they expect.

Mr Malik was speaking at Kettering Borough Council where he was presented with the findings of an independent review - Getting it right, and righting the wrongs - set up to look at how public services can keep up with the standard of customer service offered by the best. The team drew on experts from the public, private and third sectors, including Tesco, Consumer Focus and local government.

While many councils are already working hard to support their communities the challenge the review points out is to raise standards everywhere. The Government wants councils to therefore look again at how they deal with the public to ensure they have confidence in their local services.

To achieve this the Government is supporting a recommendation from the report for local councils to pilot a new toolkit to help councils and their partners measure their current service, find out what their customers really want and help them identify ways to improve including when things go wrong. Funding of £900,000 has been set aside to support nine pilots - one from each region - details of which will be announced shortly.

The report emphasised the need for partnership working to support customers. At Kettering Mr Malik visited a one stop shop to help people facing redundancy - bringing together job seekers with employers, job-centre-plus, training providers and the council's benefits services to offer practical advice and assistance to people looking for work.

Shahid Malik:

"The public have a right to expect the best from their local councils. While services are improving, the expectation of the customer continues to rise. We want to be treated as individuals, and when things go wrong, we want the problem to get sorted, fast and without fuss. This is the same if we are doing the weekly shop, booking a holiday or paying our council tax.

"This review is all about challenging what councils currently do and seeing how they fare against the best. It presents local government with a blueprint to put the customer at the heart of everything it does.

"The report sets out a series of recommendations and challenges which we will now consider carefully and respond to fully in due course. However, the recommendation of a new toolkit to help local councils challenge their thinking around how customer-focused they are is one we fully support and have provided extra funding to take forward."

The review, led by David Cook, Chief Executive of Kettering Borough Council identified three key areas where improvements would make the biggest difference to the standards of customer service delivered. These areas focused on:

1. The Service and Remedy Pledge: clearly setting out to customers how you will get it right, and right any wrongs;
2. The importance of the frontline: understanding that good people are more important than process;
3. Customer focused partnerships: making sure that partnerships deliver a seamless experience and an economy of effort for the customer; and
4. Using the knowledge and experience of customers, members and frontline staff to deliver services that are tailored to the need of the customer, rather than the council - is the key for 21st century public services.

David Cook said:

"From the outset, the review team were aware that there is much good practice out there, alongside some credible research.

"The challenge for us was to ensure that best practice becomes common practice."

Key findings include:

• Customers need clear explicit promises or pledges of the standards they can expect and what will happen if things go wrong. (These should be transparent, simple, timely, easy and flexible);
• Frontline staff are the key to the delivery of excellent services;
• Partnerships need to be customer-focused as well as considering the benefits for partners;
• Evidence shows that people are primarily interested in an apology and acknowledgement of the problem, and then their problem being put right, rather than monetary compensation;
• What was needed was an easy, practical tool for local authorities and partners to be able to apply all of the learning that is already out there;
• There are other tools and guidance documents which can then help councils and their partners in considering a route to further improvement, such as mystery shopping tools and the Customer Service Standard and the Improvement and Development Agency.

Notes to editors

1. The pilots will help identify issues and opportunities from the use of the toolkit, and will help spread learning within their region, including identifying case-studies of good practice.

2. Aside from the Communities Empowerment White paper, a wide range of research has been done in relation to customer service, complaints handling and remedy systems, with good practice identified. A research appendix will be made available online shortly.

3.  A copy of Getting it right, and righting the wrongs is available on the Communities website: www.communities.gov.uk.

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