City of York Council

The Authority's computerised database was capable of providing the information required for the Agency's monitoring returns, but it was evident that there were problems with duplication and confusion relating to the coding system. There also appeared to be evidence of some inputting errors.

The Authority had been selected for audit as they had reported an inspection achievement of greater than 100% for both food standards and food hygiene in 2002/2003. The audit confirmed that historically there were inaccuracies in the returns relating to the inspection programme and the premises profile for both food hygiene and food standards. This presented the Authority with difficulties in providing a true indication of achievement against the inspection programmes.

There were also some inaccuracies relating to the recording of samples taken, revisits made and formal enforcement actions, particularly follow-up actions on improvement notices where there was confusion over the appropriate codes. All recent formal enforcement actions were however, properly logged onto the system.

Many of the problems identified during the audit were historical and had in part been recognised by the Authority. Validation checks had been developed which had required the Authority to identify and resolve inherited problems with the system. There appeared however to be a need to further develop the validation checks and internal monitoring arrangements to ensure accurate data entry and the extraction of more precise data for completing the statistical monitoring returns.