Joint Food and Safety Service Business Plan 2024 to 2025

The Environmental Health Service has a significant role to play in improving quality of life within Buckinghamshire, predominantly through providing a proactive, accessible and efficient service that protects and promotes the health of those who work, live and visit the area.

Our vision is:

Our aims are to:

• support and assist businesses to achieve a greater than broadly compliant food hygiene rating, such as a rating greater than 3
• provide consistent, accurate and up-to-date information aimed at providing protection to customers, employees and visitors
• support and assist businesses to comply with their legal obligations to ensure that food and workplaces are safe

We will achieve our aims by:

• targeting current and relevant information to businesses
• ensuring officers are equipped with tools to effectively support businesses
• ensuring that poor performing businesses are proportionately targeted with enforcement action
• adopting a 'light touch' approach to compliant businesses and organisations;
• positively engage in the Primary Authority Partnership scheme
• promoting the food hygiene rating scheme
• exploring and implementing innovative opportunities and approaches to working with other regulatory stakeholders to improve businesses’ experience

The Food Standards Agency set out a recovery plan for re-starting food safety interventions following the impact of COVID-19 and the cessation of inspections and closure of businesses.

The Recovery Plan provided a framework up to March 2023 for the inspection of new food establishments and high-risk and non-compliant establishments while providing flexibility for lower risk establishments.

This will be implemented alongside delivery of:

• official controls where the nature and frequency are prescribed in specific legislation and official controls recommended by FSA guidance that support trade and enable export
• reactive work including enforcement in the case of non-compliance, managing food incidents and food hazards, and investigating and managing complaints
• sampling
• ongoing proactive surveillance

All local authorities are expected to have regard to the guidance and advice in this Recovery Plan which came into force from 1 July 2021.

Where we can, the Environmental Health Commercial Team will move at a faster pace in realigning with the intervention frequencies and other provisions set out in the Food Law Codes of Practice.

As part of the Environmental Health Service Review following the establishment of the Buckinghamshire unitary authority, a piece of work was carried out with staff to identify what their key requirements were for the new service.

Over the next 2 years we aim to create a service along these principles:

1. Team has taken best practice from previous legacy councils working together
2. Good leadership
3. Seen the as 'go-to' team for advice and support for businesses
4. High staff morale
5. Opportunities for career progression, for example student EHO roles
6. Sharing the skills and knowledge we have
7. Management have dedicated time to people manage
8. Well respected nationally
9. High performing team with a positive can-do culture

1. Easy to use so officers who are not tech-savvy can use it without getting frustrated or alienated
2. Using a single database system
3. Council website for all our services, no longer based on legacy district area
4. IT support integrated within our team
5. Real-time air quality information on our website
6. Access to back office systems in real-time whilst remote working
7. Better automation of forms, for example, online food registration and complaint forms with auto populating database
8. Customer self-service options for routine enquiries
9. Joined up systems that 'speak' to central government for ease of returns

1. Services are customer focused not service focused
2. Common Buckinghamshire Council procedures for all activities
3. Ability to reply via video
4. Multi-disciplinary teams to deal with complex issues (Covid cells have been very effective)
5. Project-based approach to identified issues
6. Efficient and slick processes
7. Customers and members understand the restrictions on what we can and can't do
8. Services that are current
9. Internal systems like recruitment have been streamlined

The Food Standards Agency set out a recovery plan for re-starting food safety interventions following the impact of COVID-19 and the cessation of inspections and closure of businesses.

The Recovery Plan provided a framework up to March 2023 for the inspection of new food establishments and high-risk and non-compliant establishments while providing flexibility for lower risk establishments.

By the end of March 2023, we were successful in meeting the key requirements of the Recovery Plan.

However, since the focus was on those businesses that posed a greater risk to food safety, those businesses that were lower risk were not inspected. This approach was consistent with the approach taken by most local authorities but has led to a backlog of inspections of our lower risk businesses. This has been highlighted by the Food Standards Agency and it will be a key priority to address their concerns. Whilst the focus will be on addressing the shortfall, the triaging of new businesses will continue to be a priority, as will the inspection of those that pose a high risk to food safety.

Progress is also being made to integrate the previous district council’s legacy information management systems in order to streamline the allocation and management of casework and management reporting. The expected completion date for this will be August 2025.

Our service priorities are to:

• bring together the best practices from each of the legacy authorities and to create a high performing service in line with our officers’ aspirations and vision
• ensure a consistent approach to interventions and enforcement across the new service
• review the Scheme of Delegation and authorise officers according to their competencies and qualifications in line with the FSA Competency Framework
• develop policies and procedures and in particular those relating to food safety, health and safety, operation of the Safety Advisory Groups, skin piercing registration and enforcement action
• participate in the cross-authority liaison groups and to carry out targeted food safety interventions at large events such as the F1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone
• ensure that the General Safety Certificate for Wycombe Wanderers Football Club is issued at the start of the 2024 to 2025 football season and monitor compliance
• manage and develop future partnerships with small local businesses and larger national companies as part of the Primary Authority Partnership Scheme and maintain the existing partnership relationships
• manage the efficient and timely issuing of export health certificates for local businesses
• participate in the UKHSA food sampling programme based on local and national priorities
• undertake topic based projects relating to health and safety based on local intelligence and national priorities
• provide informed and helpful advice to businesses and the public alike on matters relating to food and health and safety
• ensure that interventions are carried out commensurate with the principles of risk, at food premises within the district, ensuring compliance with the relevant food laws
• ensure food complaints are investigated
• act on food safety alerts promptly and in a manner that is proportionate to the risks involved

Service standards and performance measures have been set as part of the council’s key objectives.

Services are prioritised and resources targeted at issues of greatest concern in terms of food and health and safety.

The service covers:

• inspections of businesses
• complaint and accident investigation
• developing schemes to assist and motivate businesses to achieve compliance and good practice

The key performance measures used are:

• number of new registered food businesses that are trading awaiting an inspection. This provides a measure of additional workload above that of the annual inspection programme
• percentage of food hygiene interventions completed against the total due in the annual inspection plan. This provides a measure of the progress in meeting the annual inspection programme for high-risk food businesses
• the number of category D, E and unrated food businesses awaiting an inspection when due. This provides a measure of the impact of financial and resources constraints on the ability to deliver the service effectively

As a consequence of the government's aims for health and safety reform, including reducing the inspection burden on business and focussing on better health and safety outcomes, proactive inspections will be targeted at high-risk premises where the national priorities identify them as being an at-risk sector or local intelligence identifies businesses with poor compliance history or a particular sector specific issue in the county.

The Environmental Health Commercial Team strongly contributes towards the council's Corporate Plan 2020 to 2025, which outlines the ambitions and priorities for Buckinghamshire.

We will contribute towards this priority by:

• ensuring we are delivering services to all communities equitably, proportionally and consistently
• providing help, advice and support to consumers to protect health and promote healthier lifestyles and consumer choice, such as the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme
• providing transparent, robust and consistent approaches to investigating and resolving consumer complaints about food and food businesses
• providing transparent, robust and consistent approaches to investigating and resolving complaints from members of the public/users of publicly accessible facilities
• providing transparent, robust and consistent approaches to investigating and resolving employee complaints about their working environment and investigating accidents to prevent further occurrence
• taking part in national food sampling programmes and taking action to remove unsafe food from the market
• working towards increasing overall food hygiene ratings for food businesses, thereby protecting food consumers
• investigating substantiated food poisoning allegations and notified food poisoning outbreaks

We will contribute towards this priority by:

• carrying out interventions prioritised by risk and regulate to help ensure that all businesses are providing a safe environment for customers and employees
• investigating accidents in a timely manner to identify not only non-compliance but the root cause of the accident to prevent future occurrences
• working towards increasing overall food hygiene ratings for food businesses, thereby protecting all food consumers, and particularly those more vulnerable
• investigating single cases of specific infectious diseases where this involves a person within a vulnerable group
• supporting the Holiday Activities and Food Programme (HAF) which provides free holiday activities and a healthy meal for children in Reception to Year 11 who receive free school meals

We will contribute towards this priority by:

• carrying out waste and pest enforcement and education during visits to food businesses, ensuring that adequate provisions have been put in place
• encouraging event organisers to consider the impact of their event on local communities and where possible, to encourage alternative means of transport to and from events
• delivering services in an efficient, cost-effective manner and encouraging officers to be mindful of their own environmental impact when planning their work

We will contribute towards this priority by:

• identifying the need to ensure a consistent, proportionate and fair approach to enforcement and to create a level playing field for all businesses across the district
• working towards increasing overall food hygiene ratings for food businesses within the District, thereby improving their reputation and appeal to consumers
• delivering support, signposting and tailored advice to new and existing businesses to help them comply with relevant legislation
• targeting interventions at lower food hygiene rated businesses to encourage improvement and to help facilitate their presence on online delivery platforms and to increase their customer base
• supporting businesses through Primary Authority Partnership arrangements to ensure they get assured and consistent advice on regulatory compliance
• processing export health certificates in a timely manner to facilitate the smooth export of goods produced within the district
• supporting event organisers, through the Safety Advisory Group process, to provide safe events for workers and attendees, reducing the impact of an event on the local community and to demonstrate that Buckinghamshire is a great place to hold events