1.  We are pleased to see the Government's initiatives for improving the effectiveness of consultations and for extending their reach. We support the underlying principle that government bodies need to make systematic efforts to collate and learn from the views of citizens and people using public services. Furthermore, government bodies must do this in good faith: consultations should make plain what they are trying to do, and this understanding should be clearly communicated to the people being consulted. (Paragraph 14)

2.  We welcome the Government's support for public services that focus on service users. We believe that achieving high-quality, responsive public services requires empowering and engaging with service users as much as addressing their needs. We urge the Government to foster a public service culture of working with the people that use services in order to ensure that moves toward greater personalisation result in excellent public services. (Paragraph 22)

3.  There are many advantages claimed for user-driven public services, including strengthening citizenship and improving public services. An evaluative evidence base is starting to emerge, indicating that user-oriented services have resulted in higher satisfaction with services and better outcomes. There is little evidence as yet on their cost-effectiveness, however. We recommend that government departments overseeing public service provision put in place rigorous and coherent programmes to monitor user-driven initiatives (such as individual budgets in health and social care). These should identify both the costs and the outcomes of user-driven initiatives, in the short and the longer term. (Paragraph 37)

4.  Public service provider bodies need to consider issues of cost, fairness and risk in deciding whether user-driven services are appropriate in particular instances. Where increased user involvement is being pursued, provider organisations will need to determine how they assess and handle these issues. Departments overseeing public service provision should develop guidance on cost, fairness and risk issues arising out of increased user involvement, so that public service provider bodies can make informed decisions about how best to encourage user participation. (Paragraph 49)

5.  As part of their adherence to an overall ethos of public service, we believe public service workers should give due importance to involving and engaging with service users. This is what good public servants do. The Government should actively promote principles of public service that recognise the value of involving users. It should ensure that an understanding of service user involvement is reflected in programmes designed to develop public service skills, such as Professional Skills for Government. Professional bodies also need to identify how they can promote responsiveness to public service users among their professional members, and make the necessary changes to, for example, professional training and standards. (Paragraph 57)

6.  We conclude that successful user involvement is more likely where people can see the relevance of getting involved to the quality of their lives. In some cases people will not actually want, or be able, to take a larger role in influencing or directing the public services they receive. If this is the case, people should not be penalised (e.g. by access to lower quality services) for not wanting to engage. Where people do want to take on a greater role in service design and delivery, they should receive the necessary support, advice and guidance from service provider organisations to do so. This means that public service providers and their overseeing departments should ensure that: (Paragraph 65)

• professional staff working in those services are able to provide the support that service users will need;
• there is regular monitoring of each user's ability to manage their own service provision, in case their ability or desire to do so deteriorates;
• where necessary, personal advisers are available to support individual users, along the lines of Jobcentre Plus personal advisers and parent support advisers in education;
• the development of peer networks of service users is encouraged; and
• there is clear communication to service users about what is expected of them, and, equally, of what they can expect from service provider organisations.

7.  The Government needs to ensure that it is setting the right framework for service provider bodies to adapt to user-driven services. In particular, it needs to be careful that other policies or targets (such as requirements for efficiency savings) do not work against service providers and their staff having the freedom and flexibility to develop responsive, user-driven services. (Paragraph 71)

8.  Government bodies need to ensure that proper evaluation mechanisms are in place to monitor and assess the performance of user-driven public services. For departments that oversee public services, the relevant Departmental Capability Reviews should contain questions to test whether departments are creating the right environment for user-driven services to flourish. Inspection bodies should institute evaluation frameworks for user-driven services that ensure standards of public service provision are safeguarded, and which allow for direct input from service users into evaluation. (Paragraph 76)

9.  Involving people in public services—at least in the deeper sense which we have been considering in this Report—is still in its early days. It is as yet unclear whether user-driven public services offer better value for money or improved outcomes for all or most service users. What is clear is that stronger variants of user participation and control would have far-reaching effects on the shape of some of our public services. In particular, there would be fundamental implications for the role of public service professionals, their relationship with service users, and the way that public services are organised and assessed. (Paragraph 77)

10.  In the absence of firm empirical evidence about the effectiveness of user-driven public services, we have not attempted to be prescriptive about the ideal level and form of user involvement in public services. In any event, this will depend on the circumstances of each individual case: people should be involved in service design and delivery only to the extent that they want to be. Where deeper user involvement is both feasible and desirable, however, we believe that the Government should provide the necessary support to enable people to participate effectively in public services. This will help ensure the right conditions for user-driven public services—and the people using them—to flourish. (Paragraph 77)