Three Rivers District Council

The audit identified a number of issues regarding the food law enforcement service, many of which had been identified in previous audits. It was evident that recommendations arising from these audits had not been fully addressed or resolved including staff resource considerations.

The authority had developed a Food Service Plan for 2007/2008 and had carried out an annual review of the service that had been agreed by members. The plan contained information as set out in the Service Planning Guidance in the Framework Agreement on Food Law Enforcement, however, some of the key information in the plan including the food hygiene inspection programme, food sampling and staffing allocation related to previous years and other key information was not included at all. Future reviews of performance needed to include the measures taken to address variances in previous service plans and any required areas for improvement.

Some documented food law enforcement policies and procedures had been drafted, however these required review and full implementation. In addition a number of further procedures needed to be developed and an effective system for regular review and control of all policies and procedures needed to be established.

The authority’s procedure for the authorisation of officers required further development to detail the authorisation documentation and the competency assessment process. Individual officer authorisations needed to reflect any limitations in their food law enforcement activities. Records of training and experience, including those of contractors, were not comprehensive enough to verify the competence, training and experience of officers employed to carry out food law enforcement.

There were a number of problems identified with the accuracy of information on the service’s food premises database that had impacted on the ability of the authority to produce accurate monitoring returns to the Agency. There was no procedure in place for checking the accuracy of the database and limited evidence of verification of information inputted onto it.

File and database checks and database reports run at the time of the audit confirmed that the authority was not carrying out all food hygiene inspections in accordance with the minimum frequencies in the Food Law Code of Practice. Some high risk premises had been overdue for several months. Full records of inspections and follow-up action were not always maintained or retrievable. Hence it was not always clear from records that a consistent, graduated and timely approach to enforcement was followed. However, it was noted that the authority had followed up on serious matters by taking a range of formal enforcement actions.

It was evident that there had only been limited effective internal monitoring activity across the food law enforcement service, and that this was mainly quantitative. An internal monitoring procedure needed to be developed and implemented across all areas of the service. Audit checks identified discrepancies which could have been minimised by effective internal monitoring.