Guildford Borough Council

It was clear that, whilst the Authority did not have home authority agreements in place at the time of the audit, there was a commitment to the Home Authority Principle (HAP). File checks carried out during the audit confirmed that the Authority were considering the HAP when carrying out food safety work and, where necessary, was liaising with other local authorities. The Authority acted as Originating Authority for a number of businesses in the area and had acted appropriately on all enquiries received from other local authorities.

The audit found that the Authority�s officers were consistently providing clear and comprehensive advice to businesses during the course of routine food law enforcement activity, such as inspection, food sampling and complaints investigations.

There was a clear commitment from the Authority to proactively provide local businesses and consumers with detailed, but easy to understand, information on food safety issues. This was evident from the impressive range of effectively targeted and informative literature made available and from the diversity of the promotional and advisory initiatives which the Authority had undertaken.