Foodlaw-Reading Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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Food Law News - UK - 2017

FSA Enforcement Letter (ENF/E/17/061), 28 September 2017

ENFORCEMENT - Regulating Our Future Primary Authority National Inspection Strategy project

Summary The FSA’s Regulating Our Future programme team wrote to all local authorities during November 2016 about a feasibility study to explore Primary Authority national inspection strategies. We provided an update on this work at the recent local authority Regulating Our Future engagement events.

During November 2016 the FSA wrote to all local authorities asking for primary authority partnerships to nominate themselves to attend a workshop. The letter can be viewed via FSA letters to local authorities. 

The aim of the workshop was for the FSA, Regulatory Delivery (the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), primary authorities and their partner businesses to work together in an open policy making way, to explore how Primary Authority can support the Regulating Our Future programme. In particular, the workshop aimed to explore activities to develop effective Primary Authority national inspection strategy approaches.

10 partnerships were selected to attend the workshop. Discussions at the event led to the drafting of a set of ‘criteria’ that could form the basis of an FSA ‘standard’ for considering national inspection strategies delivered via Primary Authority Inspection Plans, and suggestions as to how the FSA should retain oversight of primary authorities with national inspection strategies in place.

In producing a national inspection strategy, a primary authority would need to provide evidence as to how they meet these criteria in their Inspection Plan rationale document.

This document is submitted to Regulatory Delivery (the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) for consent, with the FSA as a statutory consultee.

The criteria that the attendees drafted were –

• The national inspection strategy is appropriate for the business type
• Primary authority demonstrates its competency
• Business has food safety ‘pre-requisites’ in place
• Primary authority to have reviewed and issued Primary Authority Advice on the food safety management system
• Primary authority to have verified implementation of the food safety management system (and other elements as needed)
• Primary authority to have reviewed and verified compliance history
• Robust process for issuing Primary Authority Advice and overseeing compliance in the business is in place (e.g. data access, complaints, audits (1st, 2nd or 3rd party), sampling, feedback from regulators)
• Business’s own audit ‘maps’ to legislative requirements
• Evidence that non-compliances are dealt with o Evidence of peer review or benchmarking

We would like to hear from you if you think we have missed any criteria you would consider important, any criteria that you think are not necessary, and any that you feel need further explanation.

We have recently published a brief report and news story on the national inspection strategy work to date, which can be accessed from here. Our next steps are to:

• Seek stakeholder views on the draft criteria for food safety national inspection strategies (see above)
• Develop guidance with stakeholders for primary authorities who wish to develop national inspection strategies for their partnerships. This guidance will give a feel for what demonstrating the criteria could look like in practice.
• Work with stakeholders to develop FSA mechanisms for assessing national inspection strategy proposals.
• Establish how the FSA will maintain oversight of primary authorities who develop and implement national inspection strategies.
• Work with up to 7 primary authorities to test whether businesses own compliance data is useful to primary authorities in predicting local level compliance. This is a ‘pathfinder’ piece of work using a desktop assessment approach. It is designed to contribute to the evidence base and will not restrict local authority interventions in any way.
• Evaluate the pathfinder and determine whether national inspection strategies can have a role in the new target operating model.
• Consider how the food hygiene rating scheme will operate for premises that fall within a national inspection strategy. 

The FSA will continue to work closely with Regulatory Delivery (the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), primary authorities, local authorities, and other relevant stakeholders as this project develops.