Foodlaw-Reading
Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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FSA News Item, 21 November 2016
The FSA has today published official statistics on food law enforcement by local authorities across the UK for the year 2015/16. The information provided by local authorities and compiled by the FSA, gives a detailed breakdown of enforcement activity across the country.
The figures show an increase in a number of areas of local authority enforcement activity, and levels of hygiene compliance in food business, in spite of reported staffing reductions.
Nicky Harrison, Head of Regulatory Delivery Division at the FSA, said: 'While these results provide reassurance that local authorities are prioritising resources and continuing to target their work, we continue to see lower staffing levels which reduced by 6.0% in 2015/16 compared with the previous year.
'We’re very aware of pressures on staff resources at local authorities and we are working with senior colleagues across the UK to ensure that effective controls are in place in local authorities to protect both consumers and food businesses.
'At the same time we have started working together with local authorities, businesses, assurance providers and consumers in the design of a new smart, innovative and sustainable regulatory model for ensuring food is safe and what it says it is.'
Background
The FSA monitors local authority performance through Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring System (LAEMS) returns and reports on an annual basis.
The Framework Agreement on the Delivery of Official Feed and Food Controls by local authorities is the mechanism by which the FSA sets out the standards for local authority food law services, which includes the FSA’s monitoring and audit processes. Details on the Framework Agreement can be found in the section below.
LAEMS is a web-based system to which local authorities are able to upload data generated from the local system(s) on which they record data on food law enforcement activities. Further details can be found in the section below.
Once uploaded to LAEMS, the local authority data is aggregated to the pre-defined categories required by the FSA e.g. interventions, sampling and enforcement.
Individual local authority data is published online and can be found on the FSA website.
To access the data, go to: https://www.food.gov.uk/enforcement/monitoring/laems/mondatabyyear/enforcement-data-2015-16
A copy of the FSA report providing and analysis of the data is available on this site. See: Annual report on UK local authority food law enforcement - 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016
