Customer service is at the core of the public service modernising agenda and feedback on quality now assumes a great importance. Why people find a service so unsatisfactory that they complain about it is perhaps the highest form of feedback. The value of a complaint in the past was that it gave an opportunity to redress a failure, but now it is a pointer to how well a strategy is working.Because customer complaints now have a strategic dimension the Civil Service College is to launch its first conference on ‘Complaints Policy & Strategy’. It will present a strategic approach to managing complaints and offer practical assistance to delegates through a series of workshops.

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Consultation exercises launched in 1998 and 1999 have played a large part in shaping the new Criminal Justice Bill. One of its key provisions aims to break the link between drugs and crime. New drug testing powers would act as a deterrent and help identify offenders who should be getting treatment.Community sentences will be strengthened and electronic monitoring extended to provide new safeguards against criminals. Offenders who fail to comply with a community sentence will receive one final warning followed by imprisonment for a further breach of the order. There will be a new electronically monitored exclusion order which will require an offender to stay away from certain places at certain times. It will also allow for the electronic monitoring of a range of community sentences and electronic monitoring as a condition of licence.

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