Liverpool City Council

The 'Food Service Plan 2007/08' had been developed recently but not submitted for Council approval, however, it was the authority’s intention to seek approval for the 2008/09 plan at the appropriate member level. The service plan stated that the service had insufficient staff resources to carry out the full range of official controls for food standards and feed law enforcement.

The authority's food business database appeared to include all local businesses that imported food and feed. Although the authority had not been carrying out official controls of feedingstuffs entering the Port of Liverpool, arrangements had been recently put in place to monitor relevant imports of feedingstuffs. The authority was in the process of considering the monitoring arrangements required for John Lennon Airport.

The authority had regularly inspected a number of food business operators within their administrative area that had been receiving large quantities of imported food. The authority had instigated a number of accompanied inspections with the public analyst to ensure that visits took full account of the risks posed by particular products, although this had not been adequately recorded in all cases.

Feed businesses had generally been correctly risk rated and inspections were carried out by appropriately qualified officers. However, businesses had not been inspected at the frequency specified by the Feed Law Enforcement Code of Practice and records of inspection had not always been left with the feed business operator.

Enforcement staff were properly authorised according to their qualifications and experience. Trading standards staff, although well trained in other areas of their work, had received no recent imported food training and the temporary Lead Officer for Feed Law Enforcement did not have the appropriate amount of training required by the Feed Law Enforcement Code of Practice (Great Britain).

The authority had undertaken a comprehensive review of its food and feed law enforcement policies and procedures. Many of these had been updated recently and others newly implemented.

Monitoring of its food and feed enforcement services had been mainly quantitative in nature, but the authority had begun recently to include qualitative monitoring. This monitoring and subsequent corrective action required documenting in more detail.