Performance and Resources report quarter 2 2022/23: Meat food business compliance (FBO audits) England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Key successes in the quarter

Full audit completion achieved 91% in Q2 against a target of 90%, an increase of 9% points from quarter 1. This is a reflection of returning to pre-covid working levels, and priority given to achieving the 90% target.

98.7% Meat FBO premises rated 'Good' or 'Generally satisfactory' 0.2% decrease from quarter 1. 

Concerns / risks

The scheduling of audits is aligned to FBO compliance, and the volumes continue to vary per quarter across all regions despite available audit resources remaining the same. In addition, there is an ongoing requirement for the audit team to provide support for the export assurance team. Both issues add additional pressure to meeting the 90% quarterly target.

On a more general note, filling the auditor vacancies continues to be a challenge, due to the highly competitive nature of the current veterinary market and the geographical requirements of the roles.

Next steps

The business case for additional resource in the export assurance team has been approved, and recruitment for these roles is underway, as well as for the three current vacancies in the audit team. If recruitment is successful, the risk to audit delivery will be reduced.

Continue to work with Service Delivery Partner on the provision of additional veterinary audit resource to cover the high volume due in next few months. 

Work is underway to agree a memorandum of understanding and funding from Defra for increasing export assurance activity. 

Number of meat FBOs rated

• 63.2% good (increase of 6 ratings)
• 35.5% generally satisfactory (decrease of 13 ratings)
• 0.9% improvement necessary (0 ratings difference)
• 0.3% urgent improvement necessary (increase of 1 rating)

Full audit completion against target for England and Wales