London Borough of Camden

The authority had developed a regulatory service plan for 2008/09-2010/11, which included details of the food safety service. However, the service had been subject to reorganisation at the end of 2008 leading to changes in the management and delivery of the service. The regulatory service plan had not been reviewed or updated to take account of these changes. Auditors were unable therefore to fully assess whether the authority had allocated sufficient resources for the food safety service to deliver effectively the full range of food law enforcement activities. As a priority, the service needed to review fully the substantial demands placed on the service and provide relevant members with detailed and reasoned estimates of the resources needed to deliver the service.

The authority was able to provide evidence that it had considered the recommendations made in the Pennington Inquiry Report (into the 2005 outbreak of E. Coli O157 in south Wales – published March 2009), but had not formally introduced any specific measures aimed at addressing relevant recommendations. However, prior to that, the authority had developed and implemented initiatives aimed at improving business compliance with HACCP and food safety management systems (FSMS) requirements, at higher risk food establishments.

The authority had developed a full range of documented policies and procedures relating to their food law enforcement responsibilities, including procedures to assist officers undertaking interventions at routine food establishments. However, it was evident that in a number of recent cases, the authority had not always fully implemented these procedures.

The authority needed to review its officer authorisation schedules, in association with their legal team, to ensure that officers were authorised under all relevant European and UK food hygiene legislation in accordance with the Food Law Code of Practice and centrally issued guidance.

Records indicated that some authorised officers had not completed a minimum 10 hours relevant continuing professional development (CPD) training in the last year. Auditors discussed the benefits of developing a more systematic method of assessing and identifying officer competency and training requirements, and recommended further specific training for some officers regarding the assessment of HACCP and FSMS, the implementation and assessment of Safer food, better business (SFBB) and the approval and inspection of establishments subject to the specific hygiene requirements of Regulation (EC) No. 853/2004.

Database checks indicated that the authority had a substantial number of overdue inspections and unrated establishments, including several higher risk catering businesses. The authority needed to ensure that these establishments were assessed and integrated into its routine programme of inspections, in accordance with the risk-based inspection frequencies set out in the Food Law Code of Practice.

The authority had developed and implemented a system for the electronic scanning of food premises inspection records and associated information. It was evident that important information relating to some higher risk food premises were missing from the electronic records. The absence of key business and intervention records made it difficult for the authority to fully assess premises’ inspection histories in each case and to carry out effective internal monitoring.

Auditors discussed the benefits of further expanding the food premises inspection aide-memoire to prompt officers during inspections, enable them to record inspection findings and provide evidence of their assessments of businesses progress in meeting the requirements of Article 5 of Regulation (EC) No. 852/2004.

Although the authority sent detailed letters to businesses following every inspection, which highlighted most legal requirements and recommendations, businesses had not always been notified at the earliest possible occasion about documented breaches of legislation associated with HACCP and FSMS requirements. Auditors noted examples where the authority had applied inconsistent risk ratings to businesses following inspections, and in the case of some businesses, there had not been timely enforcement to achieve compliance with food hygiene requirements.

The authority had retained paper files for its approved establishments, which were generally well organised and included relevant approval and process documentation as required by Annexe 12 of the Food Law Practice Guidance. The files assessed contained detailed HACCP information and evidence that officers had reviewed and evaluated business HACCP plans. Past inspections had generally been completed using appropriate aides-memoire to record inspection findings. However for the latest round of inspections, a more basic general premises aide-memoire had been used making it difficult for officers to demonstrate that establishments had been fully assessed against all relevant hygiene legislation.

It was evident that in many cases officers actively worked with businesses to achieve compliance and had generally taken an appropriately graduated approach to enforcement. There was clear evidence that the authority was willing to use the full range of informal and formal enforcement actions available to tackle serious contraventions of food hygiene legislation, including those related to HACCP and FSMS. The information reviewed relating to hygiene improvement notices, emergency hygiene prohibition notices, simple cautions and prosecutions confirmed that in each case the enforcement decisions reached were appropriate given the contraventions identified. However, officers needed to record details consistently of all actions taken relating to these activities, in accordance with the authority’s own procedures.

File checks of complaint records confirmed that officers had followed the authority’s documented procedure, completed timely investigations of all complaints and notified the complainant of the investigation findings.

The authority had implemented a documented food sampling procedure. Audit checks confirmed that unsatisfactory sampling results had been correctly investigated and followed up, food business operators were informed and the appropriate action was taken.

Whilst the authority had developed some specific internal monitoring procedures and requirements regarding the quality of inspections and service requests, there was little evidence of any routine monitoring. The authority’s monitoring procedures needed reviewing, expanding and implementing to establish a regime of risk-based qualitative and quantitative monitoring across all areas of the service, including officer authorisations, premises risk rating and follow-up actions.