ORCC wins quality mark

Oxfordshire Rural Community Council is pleased to be celebrating the achievement of an internationally recognised quality kite mark, 'ISO 9001'.

Anne Symons, a member of ORCC’s board of directors, has acted as its ‘Quality Champion’ for the last 6 years and has been at the forefront of the organisation’s work on improving quality across all fronts. ‘These quality kite marks show that we work to the highest standards, not only in the way we advise and help rural communities with their village halls, community shops, local transport schemes and community-led plans, but also in the way we employ and care for our staff and run all our affairs’.

ORCC has special reason to be pleased with its achievement, as 2010 is our 90^th anniversary year. It was the first Rural Community Council in the country, now every rural county has one. Gill Bindoff, who will soon be taking up the mantle of ‘Quality Champion’ when Anne retires shortly, says ‘Getting the ISO 9001 accreditation is the icing on the cake as it’s so well recognised. We’re delighted that we’ve done it in this significant birthday year’.

The ‘ISO’ award is the second quality mark that ORCC has achieved this year. In March it got the highest level of the national RCC network’s own quality assurance system, and in doing so became the first RCC in the country to get accreditation by the Charity Commission. The assessments highlighted numerous areas of excellence.

ORCC expects that its ISO certificate will mean that funding bodies such as the local authorities will know that they can have full confidence in the organisation and hope it will give them the edge when looking for funds to support their work in the future.