Joint Food and Safety Service Business Plan 2022 to 2024

The food and health and safety service is delivered by a specialised Commercial Team who are responsible for:

• undertaking food safety and health and safety interventions
• investigations of accidents and hygiene complaints
• nuisance complaints linked to commercial premises
• skin piercing registrations
• food poisoning outbreaks
• sporadic infectious disease cases
• providing support and advice to businesses
• participating in the primary authority partnership scheme

The team is divided geographically North and South and is comprised of:

• an Environmental Health Manager
• 2 team leaders
• 7.6 Environmental Health Officers and Food and Health and Safety Officers
• 3 Technical Enforcement Officers (including 1 vacancy)

The team is supported by 0.45 FTE Administrative Officers.

All officers are authorised in accordance with an assessment of their individual competencies and qualifications and in accordance with the FSA Food Law - Code of Practice and Section 18. A record of authorisation for each individual is kept and any training and competency issues are dealt with throughout the year.

Contractors engaged in food or safety interventions will be appointed and authorised in accordance with the authorisation procedures and must demonstrate their competence to the satisfaction of the relevant codes of practice. During 2021 to 2022 consultants were employed to undertake food hygiene inspections, primarily in relation to new businesses.

In order to achieve the FSA Recovery Roadmap, permanent staff have been assigned to inspect those high risk food businesses (category A, B and non-compliant Cs and Ds) and those new businesses that have been triaged as high risk. Technical Enforcement Officers are triaging the new businesses as high or low risk.

Agency staff have been employed to inspect low risk new businesses but for various reasons we have not been able to consistently retain them and recruitment has proved difficult at times.

Currently we have one contractor inspecting low risk new businesses and another covering maternity leave. However budgetary constraints prevent employing additional staff and there is concern that the recovery plan will not be achieved.

The vacant Technical Enforcement Officer post will be advertised after the summer 2022.

The Food Standards Agency, as part of their revision of the Code of Practice, has introduced a Competency Framework for officers who are responsible for undertaking official controls.

All officers authorised to carry out official control interventions will be required to complete the Competency Framework and any gaps will form part of their personal development plan.

Officers have recently passed the Food Competent Certifying Officer (FCCO) qualification which enable them to authorise export health certificates.

The Council has a quarterly goal-setting and review process and 2 6-monthly formal appraisals at which time any training and development needs are identified and incorporated into a training plan.

Throughout the year, core courses are identified and staff allocated to attend as necessary. Staff have increasing access to online training and webinars. Not only does this plan reflect the business needs of the Service, it also provides for the personal development of individual officers. The Food Standards Agency’s Competency Framework has been used to identify individual competencies and training and knowledge gaps.

All training undertaken is reviewed as to its usefulness and practical applications and feedback to other officers is done during team meetings.

Following each review meeting, officers may be set more specific, short-term goals, whether this be work-related or for personal development.

Staff are encouraged to stretch themselves and so they may be asked to present to team members on a particular topic or lead on a specific intervention project or campaign. These are reviewed on an on-going basis and as part of the annual appraisal.

The budget for the Commercial Team activities is comprised of a number of elements, the greatest of which is staffing costs (97.8%). The total budget is in the region of £850,000. A budget of £10,000 is also set aside for agency staff employment.

Microbiological analysis is undertaken by the UKHSA who has agreed an allocation of sampling units based on one food sampling unit per 1,000 head residential population which equates to 15,633 credits. There is also a budget of £4,300 for ‘paid-for’ samples.

The officers involved in the food service are provided with any equipment that is deemed necessary for them to carry out their duties effectively and efficiently.

This includes appropriate personal protective equipment, inspection equipment including thermometers and sampling equipment and iPads. A record of equipment allocated to staff is to be listed in an equipment inventory, which will also include a record of the necessary calibration and service checks.

The service currently operates 2 software packages as a consequence of legacy systems. These are Salesforce and IDOX Uniform database and management systems and are used to log complaints, investigations and inspections. We also use RIAMS supplied by RHE Ltd to provide consistency in enforcement notices and which also provides a library of guidance and information on various topics.

All documents are scanned and linked to the business record which provides a more efficient management of information and data and improved access to information and business history.

As a consequence of becoming a unitary authority, the council is undertaking a series of IT harmonisation projects including:

• the use of MS Teams, Windows 365 and SharePoint
• a single Uniform system
• a digital post room
• common hardware

This will involve a significant input from team members over 2022 2023. Additionally, there is a project to migrate web-based information from the legacy websites to the council's main website (buckinghamshire.gov.uk). The team have been heavily involved in the current project and have successfully reviewed and consolidated the information for:

• event safety and Safety Advisory Group guidance
• food hygiene
• skin piercing

We are currently developing the use of online application forms and payments which will improve both access to services by residents and businesses and efficiency.

As well as being involved in corporate IT projects, the team are constantly looking at ways of improving the service it delivers. To this end, we will be rolling out the use of the iAuditor software to develop templates for paperless inspection checklists and inspection reports for businesses.

Not only will this facilitate a more efficient use of officer’s time but will also provide a clearer way of highlighting the key issues that need to be actioned using a traffic light system and incorporation of photographs in reports. These templates continue to be developed and now include templates for verification visits, sampling health and safety projects.