Inter-authority audit toolkit

The Agency is keen to support local authority initiatives in relation to inter-authority audits (IAA) and recognises that existing local mechanisms for peer review offer a potential means of meeting national and European requirements for local authority audit with a more self-regulating and sustainable model for qualitative performance monitoring.

This is consistent with the wider government shift towards reducing the burden of central audit, with greater responsibility for performance monitoring devolved to local authorities.

The Agency is looking to take full account of robust IAA programmes, as well as other initiatives such as the Peer Challenge programme. Any thorough and transparent peer review process can provide the Agency with assurance regarding the standard of the food service in participating local authorities. These authorities would therefore generally be perceived as lower risk and therefore less likely to be selected for central audit.

It is recognised that undertaking IAA can be resource intensive. This toolkit has therefore been developed to make the process easier and simpler to plan and design, in order to help Food Liaison Groups who are considering undertaking an IAA programme.

The document templates are examples from FSA audits and existing local authority IAA schemes. These could be adapted by local authorities to suit their own schemes and will hopefully save time and resources at all stages of the process. The guidance in the toolkit has been collated from the findings of the Agency’s audit programme which evaluated IAA and peer review processes in England and the Agency acknowledges the valuable contribution made by the participating food liaison groups and the individual local authorities audited as part of that programme.

It is intended to regularly review the toolkit to ensure it remains useful, current and relevant and the Agency would therefore welcome comments, views and suggestions from local authorities once they have used the toolkit in practice.

The Agency is continuing to work alongside The Local Better Regulation Office (LBRO) and other regulators on several initiatives aimed at improving regulatory services while maximising the effective use of local authority resources.