Improvement in customer service across the public sector is being limited because staff feel they lack the freedom to make final decisions. Across all sectors only 63 per cent of employees are able to actually resolve 75 per cent or more of the complaints they receive. The public sector is below this average. The research commissioned by HR Gateway and carried out by TMI also showed that the public services are one of the poorer performing sectors, but service is improving.The research also revealed a gulf between the way in which senior management promote the importance of customer service and the views of customers and employees of how they respond to the issue. Customer service staff are frustrated as they try to improve their organisation’s customer service procedures. Clive Hicks, senior consultant at TMI, says: “Mind the gap’ is the overriding message from this year’s report. We need to challenge the culture of ineffective communication between employers, employees and customers. Organisations must rise to the customer complaints challenge and take responsibility for closing the gap by listening harder to both their employees and their customers to ensure complaints are resolved more quickly and effectively.”

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A new range of cross-Government measures has been launched to tackle persisting pockets of worklessness across the country. The aim is to end pockets of unemployment, which exist in all neighbourhoods, despite unemployment being at a 30-year low.Low-cost home ownership will be promoted through job centres to increase employment in areas of chronic worklessness. This move is designed to counter recent house price rises and give tenants who currently rent properties a stake in their local community as well as acting as an incentive to take up and stay in work. There will also be more help for people wanting to leave benefits and become self-employed and business support services will be adapted to help those with unregistered businesses to ‘go legit’. In addition people facing complex problems will benefit from greater use of outreach services and community-based advisers.

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This report from the Centre for Public Scrutiny highlights the experiences of eight non-executive scrutiny chairs who have influenced executive colleagues in key decisions and made an impact on the well-being of the communities they represent. It shows that the scrutiny process delivers the most tangible benefits when local councillors take the lead, when the public is engaged in innovative ways and when there is a constructive working relationship with the executive. Kent County Council’s early years education scrutiny review is among the experiences quoted. Backbenchers from all three main parties got involved and took ownership of the early years education agenda. Their involvement raised the profile of the issue notably and they were able to sell the agenda to their fellow members.The report is available free at: www.cfps.org.uk/successfulscrutiny

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