Performance and Resources report quarter 4 2022 to 2023: Local authority performance

Key successes in the quarter

LAs have made very good progress with food hygiene interventions in line with the Recovery Plan. 

There is a small drop in the number of businesses reported to be awaiting a rating since January 2023 (0.9%) to 39,173 reported in April 2023. While new registrations that still need to be prioritised dropped by 33.9% since January 2023.

FSA Recovery Plan - current RAG status

Date	Milestone	RAG rating
By 30 September 2021 and onwards	Prioritisation of new businesses for intervention based on risk.	Green
From 30 September 2021 onwards	Completion of inspection of new registrations prioritised as higher risk.	Amber
By 31 March 2022 and ongoing	Completion of onsite hygiene inspections at Category A establishments.	Green
By 30 June 2022 and ongoing	Completion of onsite hygiene inspections at Category B establishments.	Green
By 30 September 2022 and ongoing	Completion of onsite hygiene inspections at Category C establishments, less than broadly compliant and C broadly compliant or better.	Green
By 31 December 2022 and ongoing	Completion of onsite hygiene inspections at Category D establishments less than broadly compliant.	Green
By 31 March 2023	Completion of onsite hygiene inspections at Category C establishments more than broadly compliant.	Green

Timeline

Concerns / risks

New registrations prioritised as ’higher risk’ awaiting inspection are still high (8,800).  

LAs are reporting compliance has fallen in premises since COVID-19 and more enforcement activity is required. 

LAs are reporting challenges recruiting qualified food safety officers and contractors and there are reduced number of officers able to carry out full range of official controls. 

Next steps

Actively engage and monitor LAs that have yet to give an acceptable level of assurance of performance in key areas.

Is the system as a whole targeting the risks?

• interventions achieved at the higher risk rated A, B, C (less than broadly compliant) and D (less than broadly compliant) establishments are high (99%, 99%, 97% and 96% respectively).
• LAs made good progress on interventions at C-rated establishments overall (89%) – milestone 31 March 23. 
• in addition to progressing with the higher risk businesses, LAs have made inroads into the backlog of mid-low risk businesses (Cs, Ds and Es) with 176k having received an intervention over the year. Due to the higher volumes of premises in these categories (c.25x more than As and Bs), progress to pre-pandemic levels is expected to take longer. Interventions achieved at Cs, Ds, and Es were 75% of the number achieved pre-pandemic (2018/19). 

Planned interventions achieved at A-rated, B-rated, C-rated and C and D less than broadly compliant (bc*) establishments

How does LA delivery compare to previous years?

• the analysis of FHRS data for ‘retailers' and ‘restaurants and caterers' allows us to look at LA delivery using close to live data. 
• reassuringly, within this subset of establishments, LA service delivery is coming in line with pre-pandemic levels.

All interventions achieved at retailers, restaurants and caterers

Are occupied resources returning to food hygiene control delivery work?

• slight variations in FTE data should be treated with caution as they are LAs’ estimates and only provide an indicator of resource. 
• some LAs reported additional professional resource was allocated to deal with backlogs of food controls work between April 2021 and April 2022. Where this resource was funded for a short time on top of the normal allocated resource, this is included in the FTE posts on a pro-rata basis. 
• some LAs have reported issues with recruitment of fully competent staff or long-term sickness of staff. 

Professional FTEs for food hygiene controls work

Local Authority performance and FSA oversight

How are LAs managing new businesses and is there an increase in the level of unknown risk entering the system?

• the number of unrated businesses (39k), “New registrations that need to be prioritised” for inspection (3.1k) and “New registrations prioritised as ’higher risk’ awaiting inspection” are decreasing, suggesting an improvement in the management of unknown risk in the system.
• for “New registrations prioritised as ’higher risk’ awaiting inspection” a change of wording to the question may have contributed to the large increase in October 2022 where some LAs may have reported all new businesses that had been triaged regardless of risk. The wording used in January 2023 and April 2023 was ‘higher risk’.
• the number of new registrations (new businesses or change of business ownership) changes over time as new registrations come in and interventions of previously unrated businesses take place.

Unrated businesses reported in each return*

*Until April 2022 data available from end of year annual returns. Since then data was collected quarterly. 

Prioritisation of new registrations at each quarter

Status of LA engagement

• LAs are selected for engagement based on risk. 
• based on the first tranche from the Q4 data, there are an initial 37 LA engagements (26 for food hygiene and 11 for food standards) across the three countries.
• 79 LA engagements have been carried over from previous quarters (47 for food hygiene and 32 for food standards) and we will continue to monitor the progress of the LAs concerned.
• when sufficient assurance is received that the delivery issues have been/are being addressed, the engagement is closed. An additional 50 engagements have been closed since January 2023.
• there are no LAs currently in the established escalation process.

Status of LA engagement following the April 2023 temperature check survey

Open cases

Closed cases

Escalations

) LAs escalated through the escalation process