Lancashire County Council

The Authority's law enforcement was split between the Trading Standards and the County Analyst and Scientific Adviser Services. Food law enforcement had recently been the subject of a comprehensive internal review which had confirmed this as the most appropriate arrangement for provision of the Authority's food law services.

In both services there was clear evidence of routine internal monitoring against the Authority's key, quantitative performance indicators.

With regard to the County Analyst and Scientific Adviser Service there was evidence of effective qualitative monitoring taking place against the Service's own procedures and centrally issued guidance.

The arrangements for qualitative monitoring were not so clear in the Trading Standards Service. This Service had not developed many of the procedures required by the Standard which, would have acted as a bench mark for systematic and effective monitoring. However, few problems were found with the quality of work undertaken by the Service's officers in practice and those issues identified, which were primarily related to the recording of work, may have not arisen if arrangements for qualitative monitoring had been in place.

The Authority was participating in an inter authority audit scheme and had been audited as part of this initiative. Many of the issues that were highlighted during this audit had been raised during the inter authority audit but had not yet been addressed.