St Edmundsbury Borough Council

The authority had received an audit in October 2008, the scope of which focused on the service's use of contractors to undertake food law enforcement work. The audit raised a number of issues outside its limited scope and a further audit with a wider remit was arranged to obtain a broader and more detailed overview of the service's arrangements. In the short period between the two audits, the authority had taken steps to address some of the issues raised in October.

The authority had recently produced a Food Safety Service Plan for 2008/2009, which was broadly in line with the Service Planning Guidance in the Framework Agreement and had been approved by the authority's members. This was the first specific food service plan in recent years, and it included a future review process and arrangements for addressing any variances found.

A comprehensive set of up-to-date documented procedures had not been developed and implemented by the authority. Some new procedures had been introduced subsequent to the audit in October, including those on food premises inspections and the internal monitoring of inspection activity. In addition, the authority had recognised the need to either draft or update and implement procedures on all food law enforcement activities. An action plan had been drawn up following the first audit, which detailed the procedures and target dates for their completion. Auditors were advised that once the procedures had been completed and implemented, they would be subject to annual review with ad hoc changes taking place as necessary.

The authority’s officers had not been properly authorised in line with their individual levels of qualification, training and experience. However, a draft authorisation procedure had been developed which once implemented, would address this issue and ensure that officers were appropriately authorised. Officers’ individual training needs were assessed but had not been collated into an annual training plan. Records indicated that officers were receiving appropriate and sufficient training.

A number of issues were identified with the accuracy of information held on the food database. Various reports of inspection activity produced during the audit did not provide reliable or consistent data and it was not possible to confirm the risk profile of premises within the district with any accuracy. This could impact on the validity of the authority’s statistical monitoring returns to the Agency, in addition to impeding the collation of accurate information for internal operational and management purposes.

The authority demonstrated that it was preparing to report against the new National Indicators (NIs) relevant to food law enforcement. References to the NIs were included in the 2008/2009 Service Plan, and the service’s database had been programmed to provide associated management reports. Due to the issues relating to the information held on the database, it is probable that there were inaccuracies in the data used for the calculation of the NI relating to the percentage of food establishments broadly compliant with food law (NI184).

The authority had not inspected food businesses in accordance with the Food Law Code of Practice. minimum frequency requirements, however, the full extent of overdue premises could not be established during the audit due to the issues relating to the accuracy of database reports. In general, officers were not maintaining adequate records of inspections and enforcement activity in relation to food premises and approved establishments, with insufficient detail to enable an assessment of business compliance with food law requirements. In particular it was not always clear that a full assessment had been made of the businesses’ progress in meeting compliance with procedures based on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles. It was not clear in records for premises falling under the requirements of Regulation (EC) No. 853/2004 that all such premises had been appropriately approved where necessary as the appropriate documentation was not available. The lack of records would also impede the ability of the principal environmental health officer to carry out effective qualitative monitoring of officers’ activities.

It was not clear that following a food premises inspection, appropriate follow-up action had always been taken and that a consistent, graduated and timely approach to enforcement had been adopted where circumstances had indicated that this would have been appropriate. In cases where formal enforcement action had been taken, such as a voluntary closure of a food premises and where food had been voluntarily surrendered, insufficient records made it impossible to establish that correct procedures had been followed. Where hygiene improvement notices (HINs) had been served by the authority however, these were found to be clearly worded, appropriately served and a timely follow-up visit had been made to ensure compliance.

The authority had recently developed an internal monitoring procedure for food premises inspections and enforcement notices. The procedure required expansion to cover other key aspects of the food law enforcement service. There was no evidence that comprehensive routine internal monitoring activities were currently taking place and auditors were advised that the new monitoring procedure had not yet been fully implemented. While the monitoring arrangements for a relatively small team working closely together need to be proportionate, it is important to ensure that monitoring covers the full range of activities at all officer levels, and that this is recorded.