South Tyneside Council

The Authority demonstrated a clear commitment to the Home Authority Principle (HAP) and had informal arrangements with six businesses operating within the Borough. File checks carried out during the audit confirmed that the Authority was considering the HAP when carrying out food safety and standards enforcement work. In addition, where referrals had been received from other local authorities these had been dealt with appropriately.

It was also evident from file checks that the Authority�s enforcement officers were providing businesses with clear and comprehensive advice on food law compliance in the course of inspection, complaint investigation and food sampling work.

The Authority had also established a programme of topic specific advisory initiatives to support business� compliance with food law. However, resource constraints had recently resulted in a reduced emphasis on this work and also on food safety and standards promotion activity, where the Service�s involvement was largely limited to participation in National Food Safety Week.

The responsibility for enforcement of feeding stuffs legislation had transferred relatively recently to the Authority�s Commercial Team and work to address the previous lack of activity in this area was underway.