Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council

The Authority's database was capable of providing the information required by the Agency's monitoring returns. However, problems with the coding of information relating to premises types and enforcement activity, and also with the configuration of the reports run to extract the relevant data, had led to some inaccuracies in the returns. These included inconsistencies in the premises profile for food hygiene and food standards enforcement, under reporting of written warnings and errors in the recording of revisits and complaints.

The Authority had recognised some of the problems relating to the accuracy of the database and the monitoring returns and was improving the process for validating the data. However, the internal monitoring of the database and the returns submitted to the Agency needed to be more effectively and consistently implemented. The internal monitoring arrangements needed to be detailed in a documented procedure. A comprehensive review of the configuration of the database also needed to be carried out.

The audit highlighted a large number of overdue inspections for food standards, including many premises that did not appear to have ever received an inspection. This included a number of potentially high risk premises, such as manufacturers.