FSA Press Release (2002/0250), 7 October 2002

ENFORCEMENT - Agency introduces focused local authority audits

The Food Standards Agency is introducing focused audits to its ongoing local authority audit programme in England. The focused audits will begin in October, when food sampling comes under the spotlight.

The October to December programme will include 15 focused audits, which will look specifically at local authority activity in relation to food sampling. The first one takes place on 23 October. The decision to focus on food sampling was reached on the basis of information arising from the Agency's monitoring and audit activity, which has shown significant variations in the levels of, and approach to, local authority activity in this area.

Local authority enforcement officers take food samples as part of their food law enforcement activities. Samples are taken to verify compliance with various aspects of food law, to check on safety, quality and labelling of food. They might be taken as part of a national or regional survey, during the course of food premises inspections or during an investigation into a food complaint.

A summary report of the programme of focused audits will be published on the Agency's website. The report should inform future enforcement trends and Agency policy on local authority food sampling activity.

As part of this programme, the Agency's Local Authority Audit Branch will also be visiting three public analysts and the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) headquarters to consider local authority arrangements for analysis and examination of food samples.

The audit programme from January to March 2003 will include a series of focused audits on local authority activity in relation to prosecutions and other types of formal enforcement action. It is envisaged that further focused audits will be carried out as part of the Agency's future audit programme for local authorities in England.

The following notes are included:

• Local authority audits are part of the Framework Agreement on local authority food law enforcement, which came into effect on 1 April 2001. Since then 57 full audits of local authorities have been conducted in England. Local authorities are audited against the Framework Agreement 'Standard' which sets out the full range of their food law enforcement activity.
• The Agency's Enforcement Liaison Group and Framework Agreement Sub Group, both of which include local authority representation, have had detailed discussions on the move towards inclusion of focused audits in the Agency's audit programme.
• The inclusion of more focused audits in the Agency's audit programme was agreed by the Agency Board at their May 2002 meeting.
• The focused audits will enable a more detailed assessment to be made of local authority performance in relation to specific aspects of food law enforcement activity.
• The audit programme will be placed on the Agency's website, including links to the published audit reports, as they become available. A summary report of the overall findings of the focused audits, in addition to individual focused audit reports, will also be published on the Agency's website following completion of the audit programme.
• The Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring Report published by the Agency in January 2002 highlighted a continuing decline in the amount of food sampling activity being undertaken by local authorities. Further investigation revealed that there was a large variation in the sampling rates (number of samples taken per 100 premises) between local authorities. Information arising from the Agency's full audit programme has supported these findings.