London Borough of Greenwich

The audit confirmed that the Authority had been operating under serious staffing shortages due to problems in the recruitment and retention of a full establishment of field officers, which had a significant impact on the Authority’s ability to deliver the full range of food law enforcement services.

Organisation and management – Difficulties with organisational and management systems as a consequence of the staffing shortages had been addressed by focusing activity on public safety and health priorities. Management had implemented an effective range of recruitment and retention measures, including placements for trainee Environmental Health Officers and participation in regional schemes which had recently resulted in a full establishment of officers, with the exception of 1 Team Leader. Subsequently, a detailed recovery plan had been developed by management to address most of the issues identified during the audit. This included a comprehensive review and update of the Service’s operational procedures and officer authorisation and competency assessment arrangements.

Database – It was clear that the Service had experienced information technology (IT) difficulties that were being addressed by Corporate IT. This had affected the Authority’s ability to produce accurate and complete monitoring returns to the Agency. Database checks indicated that food premises were entered on the database. However, there were some historical data anomalies that included new and closed premises and duplicate data entries, resulting in a high number of food businesses without a risk rating. These problems were being addressed by a database cleansing project.

Reactive work – In general, reactive work was timely, effective, thorough and well documented. This work included response and action on complaints and service requests, infectious disease notification and investigation and sampling follow-up as a result of investigations associated with complaints and inspections. Appropriate and thorough follow-up action was taken on food alerts.

Programmed food hygiene work – The Authority had a planned food hygiene inspection programme which generally focused on premises of highest risk. There was a significant number of predominantly lower risk premises overdue for food hygiene inspection.

Programmed food standards work – Whilst there was no planned food standards inspection programme, there was evidence that officers considered some food standards issues during food hygiene inspections. Food standards inspections ensure that food businesses comply with legal requirements for food composition and labelling and permit timely interventions where problems are identified. The Authority had identified a significant number of potential higher risk food standards premises and was proposing to target these in a focused inspection project.

Approved Premises – The Authority did not have an up to date and accurate list of Approved Premises. There was limited information on paper files, which were incomplete and poorly organised. Consequently auditors could not confirm whether appropriate procedures had been followed and if a comprehensive premises assessment had been carried out in every case. However, there was evidence that these problems had been identified and were being addressed by the Authority. A recent establishment approval had been carried out appropriately.

Record keeping – On the basis of the information provided to the auditors, audit checks indicated that complete and chronological records, relating to formal enforcement activity, surveillance sampling and inspections, had not been maintained in all cases. Complete and accurate records are essential to inform appropriate decisions on a graduated approach to enforcement and to enable effective monitoring.

Internal monitoring – Following the appointment of new staff, the Authority had begun to reintroduce monitoring checks in line with internal procedures. The procedures needed to be reviewed to ensure that they adequately encompassed all areas of the Standard.

Advice to business and food safety and standards promotion – The Authority were contributing to the national agenda in relation to the Safer Food Better Business (SFBB) food safety management initiative and by pioneering a food hygiene award scheme. The Environmental Health Commercial Service also co-ordinated the Council’s work on a local joint food policy in partnership with the Primary Care Trust and was involved in the implementation of related strategic initiatives.

Feeding stuffs – The audit included an overview of feeding stuffs enforcement as the Authority had few relevant premises. These premises had been identified and it appeared that an appropriate level of enforcement activity was being carried out.