Policy & Research

Local Government

Current Work

One of the major issues for consumers of public services in 2011-12 will be ensuring that they are involved in decision-making by public authorities on service delivery.  As the recession continues to impact  on public sector budgets, it is even more important to ensure that consumers are involved in decisions about the services they use, and that those services are focused on their needs.  

Our priorities are: 
 
Continuing to advocate best practice in consumer engagement to public service providers, supporting and encouraging them to  carry out high quality engagement with consumers.  This work will build on our 2010-11 report on best practice consumer engagement in public services. 
 
Continuing  to work on ensuring that consumers are put at the heart of public services, particularly those who are most disadvantaged and disenfranchised, on whom the recession and spending cuts may have the greatest impact.  We will continue to work with stakeholders and service providers to explore how well public services are meeting the needs of consumers, how well scrutiny bodies are adhering to their new statutory duties on user focus, and to what extent complaints systems for public services are fit-for-purpose.  We will continue to advocate our view that user focus should be embedded within the existing Best Value regime, by revising the Best Value Guidance to include the seven tests of user focus developed by us. 

Further details to follow soon.