Local authority use of contractors/consultants for feed and food law enforcement services in England

Local authorities increasingly rely on contractors to help meet their food premises inspection obligations and complete the work programmes set out in their Food Service Plans.

The Food Standards Agency carried out an audit programme between October – December 2008 to explore the extent and use of contractors within food law enforcement services in England, with a view to providing guidance to local authorities when employing contractors and to share good practice.

Twenty authorities with experience of employing contractors were audited, providing a geographical spread across England. Individual audit reports have not been published, however a number of issues were identified which local authorities should be aware of when employing contractors. Key areas for improvement related to:

• the arrangements for the authorisation and training of authorised officers, including contractors
• the quality of food premises inspections and records of findings
• use of the food premises database by contractors
• the adequacy of service planning arrangements
• the arrangements for internal monitoring of enforcement activity

Local Authority officers are reminded of the useful guidance on internal monitoring provided in the Lacors publication on Monitoring the Quality and Consistency of Food Inspections, which includes specific guidance on monitoring of contractors in section 7. The document can be found on the Lacors website.

To add further value to the audits, the programme also included discussions with individual contractors and considered responses to a questionnaire completed by contractor employment agencies. These responses are also summarised in the report.

Section 6 of the report summarises issues that local authorities may wish to consider when engaging contractors, drawn from the audit process and the discussions with local authority officers, individual contractors and employment agencies. It is hoped these will provide a helpful checklist for authorities to adopt when considering the engagement of contractors. Section 6 is provided here as a separate document for ease of reference.

There was clear evidence of good practice being demonstrated by many authorities in their use of contractors and this has also been highlighted throughout the report.