Agenda item

The Board were asked to consider the Worcestershire Regulatory Services (WRS) Service Plan 2025/2026.

 

The Director of WRS apologised for a typographical error in the report, which showed 2024/5 and not 2025/6.

 

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

 

The Board signed off 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 that some central government bodies liked to see in relation to service delivery plans e.g., the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

 

The plan followed very much the pattern of previous years and had an Executive Summary to pick up the main points. Last year’s plan was the first in recent years 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 Department for Business and Trade (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 WRS 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 that had been refreshed for the coming 3-years. This piece of work reviewed the full data and intelligence picture and looked at emerging threats. The assessment recommended retaining our cross-cutting priorities but rolling more work into these areas:

 

•         Supporting a safe and vibrant night-time economy

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

•         Promoting safe, clean, and healthy communities

 

As highlighted in the report, most aspects of business-as-usual fitted into these priorities, particularly the last where things like environmental permitting and food hygiene related to businesses that sat outside of the night-time economy.

 

Again, a range of high-level activities against the 3 tactical priorities were identified within the plan so that Members would be aware of the general focus

of the workload. Below this would sit several plans, either team based or cross cutting that would be used to drive the actual business activities.

 

The plan had been devised in the face of on-going financial uncertainty with 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 whereby businesses may take more risks to survive, and as households sought to reduce expenditure on what may be essential products.

 

The Government’s announcement of a devolution model for England involving the removal of two-tier arrangements in favour of unitary local government across England would introduce a further factor to be considered. Whatever the shape this took going forward, WRS stood ready to contribute to the conversation whilst continuing to do its best by the local authority partners.

 

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 matched 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. WRS had managed to build on our client-base post pandemic with new clients for dog-related support, and we hoped that we would be able to identify new ones, although over time this would get harder especially as the devolution/ Unitary agenda gained momentum. Officers however remained hopeful that this strategy would remain fruitful in the immediate future.

 

WRS 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 being asked to pay particular attention to the provisions for food hygiene delivery in the coming year. This was in order to meet one of the recommendations of the 2017 audit by the FSA who were keen that Members had a better understanding of the demand in this service area when they authorised the plan going forward.

 

The five new team members who had now been recruited, enjoyed working for WRS, their recruitment was a positive outcome for the Environmental Health & Trading Standards Manager’s service area. By the time this plan was implemented in April, all the new staff recruited, using last year’s funding uplift, would be trained to a reasonable level and contributing fully. So, the figures for visits would reflect the additional capacity made available to the service to deliver the increase in lower risk visits and review of new / changed premises or businesses. Members were further 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. WRS would endeavour to keep the Board updated on progress as the year progressed.

 

The Risk Register had also 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 were felt by colleagues in other local authorities elsewhere in the country. WRS would work closely with our ICT host, Wyre Forest District Council, to limit the risk of this. Our teams had for many years been using mobile and flexible work patterns which had yielded efficiencies but our reliance on ICT provision to deliver this did increase our vulnerability to disruption.

 

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, we have added a specific line for them given they were most likely one of the central bodies to intervene with local authorities. We have also added a line for the potential risk from the impact of the devolution process and the move to unitary local government, although it was not expected to create any issues in the period for which the service plan was valid.

 

Following concerns raised about the possibility of a cyber-attack, as experienced by other local authorities. The Director of WRS reassured Members that their ICT host, Wyre Forest District Council, conducted a lot of testing on systems and that regular training and reminders with regards to Phishing emails were routinely sent out. All of WRS systems sat behind their ICT host’s firewall.

 

Members referred to the plan and the FSA expectations with aligning activities more closely to the Food Law Enforcement Codem of Practice, and WRS delivering their expectations.

 

The Environmental Health & Trading Standards Manager stated that, pre-pandemic, they had received a lot of encouragement about the work undertaken by WRS with concentrating on premises with a higher risk and intelligence led inspections to lower risk outlets. However, the FSA now required Local Authorities to inspect all businesses rather than use intelligence led inspections. As highlighted in the service plan, the FSA remained insistent that authorities aligned their activities more closely to the Food Law Enforcement Code of Practice and any future revisions to the Food Hygiene Code. Part of the Agency’s role is ensuring that the food law regime operates at a level that gives confidence and reassurance to countries receiving exported UK products, that our food products were safe.

 

Members further referred to the priority shown below and were somewhat surprised that this was shown as a cross-cutting priority.

 

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

 

The Director of WRS explained that dogs turned up in so many areas of activity. Dog nuisance had joined music as a prolific source of allegation of potential nuisance, so this was increasingly an area that WRS had to work on.

 

The Director of WRS also reminded Members that, at the meeting of the Board on 26^th September 2024, Members had received a report on ‘Operation Lisbon 2 : Dog Breeding’. This report detailed that the primary purpose of the operation was to assess the people, businesses, and locations associated with unlicensed dog breeding. The report further highlighted that the total value of the adverts listed was more than £7 million across Shropshire and Worcestershire, with over £4 million of that in our county. The level of stray dogs was high, which included dogs that were not micro-chipped or micro-chipped dogs where the recorded information was incorrect. The statutory retention period for strays created significant kennelling costs for the partners.  So, all these elements were reasons for making this a priority. Members were further informed that the Technical Services Manager, WRS, was currently developing a piece of project work, which he hoped may be reported to the next meeting of the Board.

 

Members further questioned if more could be done with communications, vets and kennel clubs.  Lobby for changes in the law.

 

The Director of WRS commented that Members had as much influence as WRS for changes in the law. WRS would continue to deal with enforcement and would be developing activities to tackling some of the micro-chipping issues and continue to focus on dog breeding visits and checks.

 

The Licensing and Support Services Manager, WRS, further explained that she sat on a number of national animal health and animal licensing/ welfare groups, along with vets and other representatives. She would reassure Members that animal welfare was paramount in those conversations with officials. WRS had a very experienced animal licensing officer who conducted the checks on commercial dog breeders and kennels who held local authority licenses or anyone applying for such a licence. These checks were very robust.

 

The Director of WRS further commented that the work of the Technical Services Manager, WRS, involved a lot of communications on these aspects.

 

Members further queried Animal Health and rapidly spreading diseases not being included in the Risk Assessment, and questions were raised on the recent outbreak of bird flu and keeping captive birds.

 

The Director of WRS explained that he was a member of the Worcestershire Tactical Control Group and was part of the county-wide emergency response protocols for partners. However, the lead partner for notifiable diseases in animals would be Worcestershire County Council (WCC) Trading Standards, and for human diseases County Council Public Health and not the district councils.  District Councils had very little formal involvement in notifiable animal disease outbreak control. However, WRS would work with and assist WCC Public Health, with any human disease outbreaks as they did during the pandemic, and as part of their normal response to things like food poisoning outbreaks and similar diseases. Members were correct in that you had to register as a keeper with DEFRA even if you only kept one captive bird outside your property in an aviary or similar arrangement. You were not required to register for birds kept permanently in your home. 

 

The Director of WRS further agreed to provide information to Councillor K. Taylor on the Captive Birds new legislation and restrictions.

 

The Director of WRS responded to further questions on:-

 

·       The work carried out with Muller Dairies and Timpsons, and in doing so also briefly explained about the Primary Authority Partnerships.

 

·       Consultation and Engagement – explaining officers aimed to get out approximately 100 a month, there had been a drastic fall in the return rate.  Officers were looking at different ways to engage, sending out paper surveys, electronic surveys.  Responses were really difficult, and officers had questioned if maybe people felt bombarded in general with being asked to complete surveys / questionnaires.

 

The Director of WRS agreed to provide Councillor T. Onslow with information on how many surveys were sent out and what the response rate was for last year.

 

A comment was made with regard to taxi enforcement and district specific breakdown of information.  The Director of WRS agreed to note this for future reference and to look at including a broader outline on taxi enforcement.

 

Members also briefly questioned the process for producing the service plan and if WRS staff had been involved and if senior officers in the partner authorities had been consulted with.

 

The Director of WRS stated that staff were engaged with further down the line on what needed to be done.  The Partner Officers from each partner authority on the Board however were not directly engaged with, but officers from the partner authorities whose assistance was needed for particular activities would be contacted for support.

 

Members thanked the Director of WRS and officers for a very useful document and looked forward to their comments being noted and included in the future. 

 

RESOLVED that the Board 

 

(i)              approve the WRS Service Plan for 2025/6; and

 

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