Formal enforcement audits

The Food Standards Agency has published the reports of 18 local authorities audited as part of a specific programme of audits looking at local authority formal food law enforcement activity.

The Agency carried out the two-day audits of the 18 authorities to specifically examine their use of formal food law enforcement powers to establish if they were being used as part of a graduated approach to achieving compliance.

It was decided to carry out focused audits on this aspect of local authority activity on the basis of the Agency's Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring Report for 2000, published by the Agency in January 2002. This highlighted a continuing decline in the level of formal enforcement action being undertaken by local authorities. Further investigation revealed that there was also a large variation in the numbers of all types of formal enforcement action being undertaken by local authorities, including those of a broadly similar profile. The Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring Report for 2001, published by the Agency in August 2003 showed that the overall decline in formal enforcement action was continuing although the number of formal Home Office cautions had increased substantially. Information arising from the first year of the Agency's full audit programme also highlighted variations in the approach to the use of formal enforcement action by local authorities.

The 15 focused audits assessed the performance of the local authorities against relevant areas of the Standard. Whilst the main focus was on the authorities' use of formal enforcement actions and the arrangements in place for carrying these out, other relevant areas of the Standard were also looked at. These included the authorisation and training of officers and internal monitoring of enforcement activities by the authorities.