Agenda item

The Board considered the Worcestershire Regulatory Services Annual Report 2025/ 26.

The Director of WRS drew Members’ attention to the Recommendation, as detailed on page 35 of the main agenda pack.

Members were informed that under the Shared Services Partnership Service Level Agreement (SLA) the Board was required to receive the annual report at its annual meeting.

The Director of WRS highlighted that the report covered the performance of the service from 1^st April 2025 to 31^st March 2026. The report contained details of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and a summary of activities and data, which was presented to Members.

Performance had remained good in most areas:

• Food business compliance rates remained high.
• Taxi licence renewal timescales had fallen slightly, although were significantly above the target timescale of 90% in five working days.
• The taxi fleet was in good working order, with the number of vehicles failing tests whilst in service reducing for another consecutive year.

As with previous years, complaints against the service were significantly exceeded by compliments. Complaints arose across a number of service areas and the main issues related to complaints included:

• Individuals not being allowed to be involved with the re- homing of a dog.
• Dissatisfaction related to investigations related to planning matters.
• Concerns regarding the tone of the standard letter template used for dealing with nuisance cases.
• Response to nuisance issues, despite having noise equipment deployed to an individual’s property.

Non-business customer satisfaction was slightly improved at 57.1%, compared to last year’s figure of 56.7%, and recent figures of 59.2% and 60.4%. Further detail on this had been provided in both the Annual Report and the Activity and Performance Data, Quarters 1 to 4, 2025/ 26.

Managers would continue to work to address this performance measure. The nature of the service was such that officers would never be able to ensure that all partners were content because a significant proportion of nuisance complaints would not meet the threshold to be classified as a statutory nuisance, although performance could be improved in this area.

Business satisfaction levels fell to 92.3%, although no obvious reason for this could be identified. It was hoped that this figure would rise to above 96% in 2026/ 27.

The indicators for licenced premises and noise complaints were long established, which allowed the service to establish baselines, for which this year’s figures were at average or below.

The rate of noise complaints against population figures for all Districts had risen slightly, however remained good. It was believed that the previous summer’s record- breaking hot temperatures had contributed to this modest increase. Overall, available data suggested that a good environment was in place for the residents of Worcestershire.

The service continued to utilise some of the staff recruited during the pandemic to support work under contract to discharge the Homes 4 Ukraine support for Redditch and Bromsgrove Councils, with support from experienced WRS managers, while several other former covid staff also featured in the planning enforcement and enviro-crime enforcement team.

The Annual Report also provided a summary of the financial position, the key achievements and covered issues relating to human resources. There were also sections on risk management and equalities.

As in previous years, the WRS Annual Report would be published on the WRS website and would be shared with other partners. By putting the report into the public domain, this allowed the service to meet the requirement in the Regulators Code, made under the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008, which required local authorities to publish summary information about their regulatory activities each year.

From the comments and questions by members of the Committee, the following responses were made, and issues highlighted:

• Three full time equivalent (FTE) staff had been employed by the service to focus on areas related to food safety.
• The Food Standards Agency had required the service to produce an updated Food Safety Action Plan to reduce outstanding visits by March 2028, and to improve compliance with the Food Law Code of Practice to ensure interventions were actioned within 28 days of the due inspection date.
• The Food Standards Agency was reasonably satisfied that the service had sufficient food hygiene capacity to allow WRS to discharge its duties.
• Compliance with food safety standards was high across the County, with over 90% of businesses obtaining a Food Hygiene Rating System (FHRS) score of 4/ 5.
• Service expectations differed between businesses and the general public, whilst evidencing satisfaction amongst the general public was challenging, anecdotal evidence suggested over two- thirds of customers were satisfied with the service they had received. This satisfaction level, due to the difference between public expectations and what the law enabled, was good.

RESOLVED that

1)    The Worcestershire Regulatory Services Annual Report 2025/ 26 be noted;

2)    A copy of the WRS Annual Report be send to each Chief Executive and the Elected Members of the six partner authorities.