Agenda item

A report of the Director of Environment outlining the key challenges the Food Safety Service faces and the control measures in place to ensure that the Local Authority is meeting its statutory duties.

The Scrutiny Board considered a report and presentation of the Director of Environment which updated members on issues relating to Food Safety. The Director advised the meeting that the Council had a statutory duty to enforce food law and, in this regard, the Council’s aim was to protect the health of residents, visitors and those working in the Borough through the efficient and effective enforcement of food safety laws. 

The report submitted outlined the key challenges the service faced and the control measures that were in place to ensure that Oldham Council currently meets and will continue to meet in future years its statutory duties in relation to the delivery of official food controls.  

The meeting was informed that Oldham had approximately 2,025 registered food businesses.  The Council’s Commercial Protection Team were responsible for both food safety and food standards enforcement in food businesses.  

In accordance with Food Standards Agency (FSA) Statutory Codes of Practice, food safety and food standards inspections were carried out on a risk priority basis with higher risk premises being inspected more frequently. After each inspection, the food business received a risk rating. The frequency of inspection was determined by these risk scores. Food officers carried out both safety and standards inspections during the same visit where possible to ensure the most efficient use of resources.

The performance of the Council, in this regard, was monitored by the FSA.  Authorities were required to submit twice yearly returns.  During 2024, the FSA contacted Oldham Council and commenced performance engagement due to the number of overdue interventions.  Subsequently, an action plan was put into place for the authority to realign to the inspection frequencies in the code of practice.  The authority had been progressing well through the delivery of the intervention programme and in June 2026, the FSA reduced the status of engagement with the Council from Level 1 engagement, to monitoring.  The action plan remained in place, with an objective to ensure full realignment to the code of practice by 31^st March 2027. 

Since the onset of Covid-19 restrictions, in March 2020, the service had been dealing with an ongoing backlog of inspections.  Demand for the service was increased due to a continual rise in newly registered food businesses, and there were significant resource pressures due to recruitment difficulties and staff vacancies.  Recruitment efforts had proved to be unsuccessful and alternative measures, including agency staff and overtime, were being used to maintain service delivery.  To combat an industry shortage of qualified Environmental Health Officers, the service has introduced a career graded Environmental Health Officer position to attract graduate students and currently have a Regulatory Compliance Trainee in post, due to working with the Greater Manchester Regulatory Centre for Excellence.

The service continued to face significant resource pressures due to recruitment difficulties and staff vacancies. However, during 2025/2026 the number of food hygiene inspections increased by 40%, with 891 carried out at premises due/overdue for an inspection.  In comparison 638 inspections were carried out during 2024/2025.

There was a total of 1,249 premises that were due a food hygiene inspection during 2026/2027.  Considering current resources and vacant posts in the team, the delivery of all due interventions posed a significant challenge, however, the service is striving to complete all interventions in 2026/2027 to ensure realignment with the Food Law Code of Practice. 

The volume of inspections and other associated work could not be met with the allocated resources available (particularly as 1.7 FTE Food Environmental Health Officer posts in the team were currently vacant.  Therefore, funding via the vacant posts would be utilised for agency staff and overtime for qualified food officers, to ensure that the work detailed in the submitted report could be completed.  Alongside this, recruitment was undertaken to fill the vacant positions. 

Food Standards inspections would be prioritised on a risk basis; therefore, all category priority 1,3 & 6 inspections would be completed, and unrated premises were to be inspected as they were due to receive a hygiene inspection.  The premises overdue a food standards inspection will be completed alongside their food hygiene inspection.

Resolved:

That the Director of Environment’s report and presentation on Food Safety in the Borough of Oldham, be noted.