Agenda item

The Board were asked to consider the Worcestershire Regulatory Services (WRS) Service Plan 2024/2025.

The Head of WRS introduced the report and in doing so drew Members’ attention to the Recommendations, as detailed on page 31 of the main agenda pack. .

It was detailed to Members that, the Board signed off on the service plan for WRS each year. The process helped to make Members aware of what the service was proposing for the relevant financial year and provided a sign off which some central government bodies liked to see in relation to service delivery plans e.g., the Food Standards Agency.

Officers reported that the plan followed the same pattern of previous years and Members’ attention was drawn to the Executive Summary on page 38 of the main agenda pack to highlight the main points. Last year’s plan was the first which had no pandemic related activity as part of it.

This year’s plan continued to consider the long-standing strategic priorities for local authority regulatory services provided by DBaT, as these provided a framework that allowed WRS to have a golden thread back to the priorities of the six partners and to link to the requirements of the various national bodies that oversaw the work of WRS. 

Whilst we had retained these for this purpose, the focus of this year’s plan remained on the tactical priorities identified in the service’s Strategic Assessment. This piece of work reviewed the full data and intelligence picture, looked at emerging threats and made a number of recommendations as to the areas that need to be addressed, as detailed below:-

·         Supporting a safe and vibrant night-time economy

·         Promoting the responsible sale, breeding, and ownership of dogs

·         Promoting safe and healthy communities

·         Supporting commercial businesses to operate safely and responsibly

·         Supporting industry to operate safely and responsibly

Whilst the last two were best described as business as usual for a regulatory service, the other three were cross cutting in nature and would need to be addressed by various staff within the three teams to deliver outcomes for our communities. The Strategic Assessment would be reviewed during 2024/2025 and Board Members would be updated on the outcome of this during the year.

Again, a range of high-level activities against the 5 tactical priorities were identified within the plan so that Members would be aware of the general focus of the workload. Below this would sit a number of plans, either team based or cross cutting that would be used to drive business activities.

The plan was devised in the face of on-going financial uncertainty with inflation staying high and money being tight across the public sector. Both businesses and households continued to feel the pinch, and this had led in the past to increases in work for regulatory services as businesses may take more risks to survive and households sought to reduce expenditure on what may be essential products.  

Working with businesses and other partners was a key theme for both generating income to mitigate financial risk but also to ensure that outcomes were delivered that match the priorities of partners and stakeholders. Delivery for other local authorities also remained a key income generation strategy, supported by limited work for the private sector and any specific grant monies that we felt were worthwhile pursuing. We had retained most of our client-base post pandemic and we hoped we would be able to identify new ones, although over time this did get harder. We did however remain hopeful that this strategy would remain fruitful.

We would continue to use intelligence to drive the business forward and the embedding of this approach and its associated processes would continue.

As with previous years, Members were asked to pay particular attention to the provisions for food hygiene delivery in the coming year.  This was to meet one of the recommendations of the auditors from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) who visited the service in May 2017. The FSA were keen that Members had a better understanding of the demand in this service area when they authorised the plan for this year and future years. This was particularly relevant given the information provided to Members regarding our recent engagement with the Food Standards Agency and the outcome of increasing resources.

Members were being asked to note the proposed numbers of inspections and similar activities proposed for the new financial year that would be undertaken to discharge the statutory duties of the 6 partners in relation to food control. Board Members would be updated on progress as the year progressed forward.

The Risk Register had been updated to reflect the current position in areas like IT provision and development, staffing levels, and our reliance on contractual relationships for income. The threat from cyber-attack had become more real in recent years as the devastating consequences felt by colleagues in other local authorities elsewhere in the country. WRS would work closely with their ICT host, Wyre Forest DC, to limit the risk of this.

Given the FSA intervention, although this potential issue had always been flagged in the Risk Register as a general risk of not meeting Government or central body expectations, a specific line for them, had been added to the Risk Register.

The Head of WRS agreed to add data to the food section relating to the way the FSA looks at officer numbers versus the number of food premises in the area as this might help other Members to understand the situation if looked at again in the future.

The Technical Services Manager, WRS responded to questions from Members with regards to stray dogs, microchipping stray dogs, XL Bully dogs; and the current legislation on identifying an XL Bully dog and the XL Bully dog ban; which came into effect as from 1^st February 2024.

RESOLVEDthat

a)    the Worcestershire Regulatory Services Plan for 2024/2025, as   detailed in the main agenda report pack, be approved; and

b)    Members specifically note the level of work to be undertaken by the service this year in relation to the partners’ roles as local food authorities.