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Charter Mark

The Charter Mark standard helps organisations focus on and improve their customer service. Organisations that meet our standard show they put their customers first and aim to constantly improve and give value for money.

• Replacement of Charter Mark
• Current holders of Charter Mark
• Charter Mark criteria
• Assessment scoring system
• Charter Mark logo
• Contact us

Replacement of Charter Mark

Charter Mark closed to new applications on 30 June 2008.

Organisations that were considering applying for Charter Mark should now consider the Customer Service Excellence standard instead.

• Customer Service Excellence [external website]

Current holders of Charter Mark

Current holders of Charter Mark can continue using the standard until the scheme officially ends on 30 June 2011.

You can find details of all holders in the Charter Mark holders directory.

Charter Mark criteria

The Charter Mark standard consists of six criteria.

• Charter Mark criteria [PDF 135KB]
• Charter Mark criteria [Word 163KB]
• Criterion 6 explained [Word 32KB]
• Good practice examples using the criteria [Word 150KB]

Assessment scoring system

All holders of Charter Mark are assessed once a year to make sure they still meet the standard. Assessors judge organisations based on documentary evidence, observations and discussions.

Assessors score organisations against each element of each criterion using a four-band scale:

• best practice – all aspects of the element are met, and the applicant can demonstrate that they have gone beyond the requirements
• full compliance – all aspects of the element are met
• partial compliance – some but not all aspects of the element are met and remedial action to meet the remainder could be put in place within three months
• major non-compliance – none of the aspects of the element are met, or the assessor concludes that remedial action would take longer than three months

To continue to meet the standard, holders must:

• demonstrate at least 70% implementation of all the elements
• score zero major non-compliances
• not exceed the maximum allowable number of partial compliances (see the table below)

Charter Mark logo

The Charter Mark Logo should only be used by organisations that currently hold the award.
Below you can download the artwork for the Charter Mark logo. When using our logo, please follow our guidelines.

• Style guidelines [PDF 126KB]

If adding the logo to your website, link back to this page from the logo.

Remember to include the absolute path with the filename if you store the GIF in a directory that differs from the HTML file to which you add this code.

Logo files for download

• Black and White (English) [PS 345KB] – print quality
• Black and White (English) [JPEG 30KB] – suitable for web
• Black and White (English) [GIF 12KB] – suitable for web and Word documents)
• Colour (English) [PS 345KB] – print quality
• Colour (English) [JPEG 12KB] – suitable for web
• Colour (English) [JPEG 38KB] – suitable for web
• Colour (English) [GIF 592KB] – suitable for web and Word documents
• Black and White (Welsh) [PS 218KB] – print quality
• Black and White (Welsh) [JPEG 55KB] – suitable for web
• Black and White (Welsh) [GIF 24KB] – suitable for web and Word documents
• Colour (Welsh) [PS 218KB] – print quality
• Colour (Welsh) [JPEG 106KB] – suitable for web
• Colour (Welsh) [GIF 32K] – suitable for web and Word documents

Downloading EPS files using Internet Explorer

If you download EPS files in Internet Explorer, the file extension .eps may change to .ps when you try to save the file. In this case, just change the extension back to .eps.

Contact us

Email: Charter Mark