Aberdeen (Core Audit) (Closed)

Aberdeen City Council is a Scottish Unitary Local Authority and therefore has responsibility for enforcing food hygiene, food standards and feeding stuffs law within the City Council’s area.

The Authority has a Food Regulatory Service Plan covering food hygiene and food standards law official controls that generally meets the requirements of the Service Planning Guidance in the Framework Agreement. A separate Trading Standards Service Plan covers feeding stuffs.

An annual review based on the 2005–2006 Service Plan had been carried out and had been reported to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee with the 2006–2007 Service Plan in November 2006.

According to the 2006–2007 Service Plan 1,824 businesses in the Authority’s area are subject to official controls under food hygiene and standards legislation. There are also 20 registered establishments under feeding stuffs legislation.

The Authority has appointed authorised Officers and inspectors to enforce food and feeding stuffs law, and qualification and training records for Officers who are responsible for food law official controls generally demonstrate that Officers are appropriately qualified, trained and experienced.

Some food hygiene and food standards premises inspections are not being conducted at the minimum frequencies required by the Food Law Code of Practice, and where inspection and audit record forms have not been fully completed, records relating to establishments that are subject to Regulation (EC) No. 853/2004 are not sufficiently detailed to determine whether inspections and audits have assessed compliance with all aspects of relevant legislation.

Sampling policies, procedures and programmes for food and feeding stuffs have been developed and are being implemented. Adverse food and feeding stuffs sample results are generally followed-up appropriately, although some reports from the Public Analyst were incorrect.

Officers use a range of informal and formal official control options to secure compliance, including letters, voluntary surrenders of food for destruction, hygiene improvement notices, and references to the Procurator Fiscal for prosecution.

Service performance is generally being monitored in accordance with required standards, although monitoring of the food law official control service had recently lapsed at the time of the audit and was not therefore meeting the Authority’s standards in some areas.

Following the Agency’s audit in April 2007, Aberdeen City Council developed an action plan to address the non-conformities raised.

The Agency notes the progress that has already been made with implementation of the action plan.

The information in the follow-up audit report at the link below details the following:

• the original non conformity identified during the May 2007 audit
• the action the authority intended to take to address the non conformity
• the date by which the non conformity was to be rectified
• the progress to date as notified by the authority in April 2008
• the comments of the Agency auditors following their follow up audit in August 2008
• the status of the non-conformity following this follow up audit

The actions taken to address the action plan have been noted. The Agency notes that the authority is due to upgrade their database and this will commence in September 2008.

The Agency has taken the decision to close the audit file.