Newark and Sherwood District Council

The Authority had effective arrangements in place to ensure that its food premises database was complete and up to date.

Newark and Sherwood was selected for audit because it reported a food hygiene inspection achievement of over 100%. The reason for this was that the Authority carried out a food hygiene inspection programme in excess of the minimum frequencies set out in Food Safety Act Code of Practice No. 9: Food Hygiene Inspections.

The database was capable of providing all of the information required by the Agency monitoring returns. There were however some inaccuracies identified in the official returns submitted. These related to the under-reporting of the numbers of inspections, revisits, samples and formal enforcement actions. There was also some over-reporting, as the way in which the database was configured appeared to enable sampling and advisory visits and other visits to be double counted.

The Authority had procedures in place for checking of information held on the database and validation of the monitoring returns. However, the audit findings highlighted that this had not been fully effective in identifying and resolving problems. Many of the issues highlighted should be easy to identify and resolve by effective checks of data by managers and effective validation of the returns prior to submission to the Agency. A new post had been recently created to ensure the quality and accuracy of the data held on the database and that submitted to the Food Standards Agency in the statistical monitoring returns.