How can the food hygiene funding crisis be tackled?

Food hygiene spend down 19%. Food standards staff numbers down 45%. And less than 40% of planned food checks actually carried out.

Last week’s food safety and standards review by the National Audit Office paints an unsettling picture. It found English council spending on food hygiene dropped by £24m from 2012-13 to 2017-18. Over the same period, “significant funding pressures” resulted in local authorities carrying out just 37% of planned food standards interventions, down from 43%. Sixteen councils undertook no sampling at all in 2017-18.

This is, of course, not the first time we have seen warnings about cuts to food inspections. In 2016, research by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies showed food inspections had fallen by 15% from 2003 to 2014.

But as the UK finds itself in the midst of a major listeria ­outbreak, this latest NAO report comes at an especially critical time. So what does the report tell us about the state of the our food safety system? And how might we fix it?

Under pressure

NAO head Gareth Davies is not mincing his words. Since the government’s austerity drive began in 2010, public sector spending has been under pressure. Now, the cuts have reached a level where the “regulatory system is showing signs of strain”, he says.

What’s more, the government’s priorities are less than clear. On the one hand, there’s talk of the UK becoming a global leader in food safety after Brexit; on the other hand, there is little willingness to stump up the cash to ensure even current standards are enforced.

The government does not have “a clear view on what a financially sustainable food regulation system should look like”, the NAO report claims, and warns of a lack of “joined-up strategic thinking about the level of funding needed”.

To fix this, getting the Food Standards Agency to “reinstate its [financial] support to local authorities for food sampling” would be a good starting point, suggests Chartered Institute of Environmental Health director Kate Thompson.

The FSA itself is more cautious about this idea. While it may look like a compelling solution, it is unlikely to happen in the short term, warns head of regulatory compliance Michael Jackson. The NAO knows local authority funding is “an issue the FSA itself cannot resolve”, he says, as the watchdog has neither the budget nor direct influence over the amount local authorities spend.

At the same time, Jackson says he is “very positive” about “a wider conversation with other government departments” on future funding, ­adding there are scenarios where central funding can work.

Listeria

Given the headlines about the devastating listeria outbreak, the government may well find itself under growing pressure to reconsider its stance on central funding. However, investigations are still ongoing, so it’s difficult to know whether better sampling might have prevented the outbreak.

In any case, central funding isn’t a panacea. “A limitation of the central funding route is that while you’ll get the inspections completed and tick that box, it doesn’t necessarily build resilience and capacity in councils to the wider range of [food safety] activities they need to carry out, including being reactive to incidents,” says Jackson. “If you’re funding an inspection, that’s all you will get.”

Still, our food remains safe, he insists. “What is important is that we continue to monitor local authority performance, and where we see shortfalls we intervene.”