Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

The authority had developed a Food Safety Service Plan for 2010/2011 that was broadly in line with the Service Planning Guidance in the Framework Agreement. Future service plans would, however, benefit from the inclusion of a comparison of the staff resources required to deliver all the food law enforcement service against the resources available to the authority.

The authority had recently contributed to a range of comprehensive policies and procedures developed by the regional food liaison group covering most aspects of the food safety service. This included a system of document review and control. However, auditors were unable to confirm that these procedures had been implemented fully at the time of the audit.

The authority had developed a system of identifying officer competency requirements and issuing legal authorisations. This system required further review to ensure that officers were only authorised in accordance with their individual qualifications, experience and competency and to ensure that officers were authorised under all relevant food safety legislation. The authority took immediate steps to review and update officers schedules of legal authorisation.

Training needs were identified during yearly appraisals and, in general, the authority was able to demonstrate that authorised officers had undertaken the recommended minimum 10 hours relevant training, based on the principles of continuing professional development, including recent HACCP training.

At the time of the audit the authority had identified a significant number of food business establishments that either did not have a risk rating or were overdue an intervention. Although some overdue inspections involved higher risk establishments, the majority related to medium and lower risk establishments. The service was targeting the most high risk premises with the resource available.

Inspection aides-memoire in use at the time of the audit were insufficient to prompt officers to record detailed findings during food safety inspections. In particular they failed to capture the level of assessment of food safety management systems (FSMS) completed by the officer. Aides-memoire were often only partially completed or, in some cases, were missing from files, making it difficult for officers to justify risk scores or their choice of follow-up actions.

Letters to businesses following inspections were generally comprehensive, outlining inspection findings clearly, differentiating between legal contraventions and recommendations, and providing suitable timescales for completion. However, a large proportion of inspection letters reviewed were sent many weeks or months after the date of the inspection. Although food business operators (FBOs) were also sometimes told informally about inspection findings, the lack of timely formal notification could affect any future enforcement actions by the authority, and possibly hinder timely business compliance.

An officer interview and a ‘reality check’ visit at a food business were undertaken during the audit. The main objectives were to assess the officer’s knowledge of HACCP and FSMS, the authority’s own systems and procedures and to evaluate the effectiveness of the authority’s assessment of food business compliance with food law requirements. Although some issues were identified during the visit, the checks completed by the officer were appropriate, with officers demonstrating an understanding of HACCP and FSMS.

The authority was unable to provide documentation relating to the approval and assessment of the approved establishment in the area. Auditors were informed that the relevant premises file had been lost. Due to the lack of documentary records it was not possible for auditors to determine if the establishment complied with legislative requirements or whether officers had undertaken suitable assessments of the business as required by the Food Law Code of Practice. The authority assured auditors that immediate steps would be taken to retrieve the information, or to take urgent action to re-assess the business.

Record checks confirmed that officers were willing and able to undertake a range of formal enforcement actions to help secure business compliance. However, auditors noted that the authority had not always adopted a graduated approach to enforcement at some higher risk establishments where repeated serious breaches of food hygiene legislation had been recorded.

A range of enforcement actions were reviewed, including hygiene improvement notices. In most cases the actions taken were appropriate to the circumstances and had generally been undertaken in accordance with the Food Law Code of Practice, including regular contact and follow-up with the FBO.

The authority maintained comprehensive food and food premises complaint investigation details and had undertaken appropriate investigations in relation to the complaint in each of the cases reviewed during the audit.

The service had undertaken sampling in accordance with their sampling programme and had taken appropriate actions where unsatisfactory results had been obtained.

The service was able to provide detailed evidence of quantitative monitoring relating to inspection numbers and targets. However, there was little documentary evidence of any risk based internal monitoring relating to the quality of officers' work across the full range of food law enforcement activities performed by the service. The service had, however,adopted a new regional internal monitoring procedure that, if regularly reviewed and rigorously implemented, should address many of the issues identified during the audit.