What Is The Citizen's Charter And How Was It Reformed?

The Citizen's Charter, set up in 1991 by John Major, set targets so that government would make civil servants more accountable to members of the public and improve standards of service provision. In June 1998, the government announced that this programme would be replaced by the Service First programme. As a result, the change would allow public bodies to canvass opinion about the quality of the services they provide. Like the Citizen's Charter, the Service First scheme is run by a team in the Cabinet Office.

Their role as a team also extends to monitoring the quality of public services and offering advice on how standards could be improved. In the late 1980's and early 1990's steps were taken under the Conservatives to introduce market forces into the civil service. This took two main forms - contracting-out services to the private sector and selling them off. Whilst the privatisation of services proved relatively straightforward, contracting-out was less so.