FSA publishes latest annual report on local authority food law enforcement

4 Sep 2019 02:00 PM

The FSA yesterday published official statistics on food law enforcement by local authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for the year ending March 2019.

The information, provided by local authorities and compiled by the FSA, gives a detailed breakdown of enforcement activities carried out across the three countries.

The new data shows that across the three countries:

Maria Jennings, Director of Regulatory Compliance at the FSA, said:

“Local authorities are there to ensure that food businesses produce food that is safe and what it says it is. One of the FSA’s roles is to have oversight and assurance about their performance.  

“It is good to see an increase in the total percentage of planned hygiene interventions that local authorities are carrying out and an increase in premises with standards equivalent to a food hygiene rating of 3, 4 and 5.  It remains concerning that there has been another decrease this year in the percentage of planned food standards interventions undertaken. To address this long standing issue, we are working closely with local authorities to develop a new sustainable model for food standards interventions which will include a mix of inspections and the use of better intelligence and surveillance.

“Analysis of the data in this report will be used with a range of other information to assess performance of all local authorities and to gives us a picture of local activities aimed at protecting consumers and maintaining confidence in the food chain.”

Report and data

LAEMS 2018-2019 report and data

Background

The Framework Agreement on the Delivery of Official Feed and Food Controls (Opens in a new window)  by local authorities sets out the arrangements we have in place for monitoring local authority performance.  

Data are collected electronically using a web-based system - the Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring System (LAEMS) - on an annual basis.  The data collected covers food hygiene and food standards.  It includes numbers of registered businesses and a range of local authority activities such as numbers of interventions, sampling and enforcement actions. 
The data and a summary report are published annually as official statistics and are available on our website. 

The FSA Board will be discussing Local Authority performance at their meeting on 18 Sept. For more information and to register to attend visit www.food.gov.uk/about-us/our-board