Wychavon District Council

The authority had drawn up a service delivery plan 2009/2010 for the range of duties carried out by environmental services including the commercial services team. The plan identified a number of key achievements, stated targets for the year ahead and had received member approval. The auditors recognised that with the advent of the proposed merger of the department into a shared service structure it may be necessary to adopt a standardised method of service planning in a format that would be able to be aligned to that with other authorities.

The policies and procedures in use were generally detailed and comprehensive, providing guidance to officers of the methods and processes to follow for food law enforcement. An effective system for review of these policies and procedures was in place and some had been recently reviewed. The authority had maintained a document control system based on ISO 9000 quality management principles with documents being available electronically for officers.

The authority had a procedure for the authorisation of officers which took account of officer qualification, experience and competency. The authorisations generally covered the range of legislation under which officers were authorised.

Records of the food hygiene inspections and other actions undertaken by the authority confirmed that file records were well organised and easily retrievable. There were a number of different inspection aides- memoire on the files but most recent forms reflected the improvements that had been made over the past year in response to the outcome of the Pennington report.

Officer training and qualifications records confirmed that generally the authority had provided adequate training to officers commensurate with their tasks and in accordance with the specified levels of continuing professional development (CPD) training requirements as required by the Food Law Code of Practice. Officers had recently received update training on HACCP evaluations.

The approved establishment files should be reviewed to reflect the information required by Annex 12 of the Food Law Code of Practice Guidance. Although approval documents were available, there was insufficient information on some of the files particularly in relation to the evaluation of HACCP systems. The use of an appropriate inspection aide-memoire specific to the approval activity would prompt officers to capture the full business compliance history.

The authority had developed a procedure for the investigation of food complaints and it was evident that all complaints had been thoroughly investigated.

The authority had set up, maintained, and were implementing a documented sampling policy, procedure and a sampling programme. File checks showed that letters had been sent relating to follow-up actions in all cases of unsatisfactory samples, and food business operators had been informed of outcomes.

The authority was using appropriate and effective enforcement powers in accordance with their enforcement policy to ensure that food business operators were compliant with the legislation, including the use of Hygiene Improvement Notices (HINs), and a prosecution. When using these powers, the authority was able to show that they had, in general, used a graduated approach to enforcement.

The authority had an internal monitoring system as part of their ISO 9000 accreditation. In practice monitoring was undertaken across the range of food law enforcement activities particularly with regard to quantitative aspects of the inspection programme. Auditors were informed that officers received informal feedback from these monitoring activities at team meetings and at one of the four monthly reviews. However, the absence of records relating to internal monitoring made it difficult to ascertain the effectiveness of the monitoring which had taken place. It was noted that the new aide-memoire form already incorporated a monitoring reference to address this issue.

Although there was no current third party or peer review system in place, the authority had participated in a number of initiatives, particularly in relation to consistency exercises for the assessment of food establishments. The authority had also worked with local manufacturing businesses on a joint training day for officers in relation to HACCP assessments.

An interview with an officer and a reality check visit to a food business with another officer were undertaken during the audit. Both officers could demonstrate a clear understanding of the key aspects of carrying out an inspection and the assessment of a food safety management system (FSMS) appropriate to their level of authorisation.