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Abstract
There has been much discussion about ‘needs-led’ health service provision in recent years. In the UK, this has been driven, in part, by legislative changes designed to make service providers demonstrably more accountable to consumers. Consumer audit (CA), as described in this paper, is a means by which this can be achieved. It involves eliciting the consumer perspective on the delivery and content of services. Once gathered, such data can be used systematically to inform service development. By starting from what consumers feel to be important, CA has the potential to facilitate needs-led services. A model of this process, derived from the authors' CA of a substance misuse service in London, is presented. Some issues and problems associated with CA are discussed.