Local government faces many challenges today, including the management of increasingly scarce resources, the provision of modern services in response to public needs, competition for services from outside local government, increasingly complex issues of political control and direction, and the challenge to local government autonomy by central government. Against this background, this volume is part of a series offering advice on management development and training for officers in local authorities. It tackles the broad management issues and strategies which affect all local authorities and all their departments. In this work, Chris Skelcher focuses on the planning, organization and management of customer-oriented local government services.