Councillor Richard Church, Cabinet Member for Legal and Regulatory Services, approved the Powys Food Service Plan for 2025/26. The plan outlines how the Environmental Health and Trading Standards services will deliver food hygiene and standards enforcement in Powys. It aims to ensure national and local priorities are addressed, and that food produced, stored, distributed, handled or consumed in Powys is safe for consumers.

Powys Food Service Plan

The Powys Food Service Plan 2025/26 was approved at the meeting. The plan is required by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) Framework Agreement^1, which provides a mechanism for the FSA to oversee local authority enforcement activity related to food safety and standards. The plan details how Powys County Council will ensure food safety and standards are maintained across the county.

Key aspects of the plan include:

• Service Aims and Objectives: The plan aims to ensure that food (including drink) intended for supply for human consumption that is produced, stored, distributed, handled or consumed in Powys is accurately labelled, safe and without risk to the health of the consumer.
• Background: Powys is a rural area with a population of 133,174 and covers a quarter of the land mass of Wales. The Environmental Health and Trading Standards teams are responsible for food safety and standards.
• Service Delivery: The plan outlines how food inspections, complaint investigations, and advice to businesses will be carried out. It also covers the control and investigation of outbreaks and food-related infectious diseases, as well as food safety incidents.
• Resources: The plan details the financial and staffing resources allocated to food safety and standards. It acknowledges the challenges faced by the service due to resource constraints and the ability to meet statutory inspection frequencies. Additional funding of £211,000 per annum for three years has been allocated to the Public Protection Service to increase capacity.
• Quality Assessment: The plan includes monitoring arrangements to assess the quality of the food service.
• Review: The plan will be reviewed against the service plan, and any variations from the previous year's plan will be addressed.

The plan acknowledges the challenges faced by the service, particularly in relation to resource constraints and the ability to meet statutory inspection frequencies as required by the Food Law Code of Practice^2. The council has committed additional funding to support service recovery and partial compliance with statutory duties.

The plan also addresses the findings of a Food Standards Agency (FSA) audit which resulted in a 'Limited Assurance' report for both Food Hygiene and Food Standards. A separate improvement plan is in place to address the deficiencies identified in the audit report.

The plan includes performance indicators to measure the effectiveness of the food service. These indicators cover areas such as the percentage of food establishments which are broadly compliant with food hygiene standards, the percentage of food hygiene inspections carried out in accordance with the Food Law Code of Practice, and the percentage of new businesses identified which were subject to a food hygiene inspection.

The plan also outlines the service's approach to food sampling. Trading Standards undertakes food standards sampling to protect public health, detect and deter fraudulent activities, verify that official controls are effective, give customer's sufficient information to make informed choices, ensure that food standards are maintained, inform the enforcement approach, provide product quality advice to the producer, promote fair trade and deter bad practice. The Environmental Health service participates in and is represented on the Welsh Food Microbiological Forum.

The plan recognises the importance of providing advice to businesses to promote compliance and reduce the need for formal enforcement action. Advice is provided in a variety of ways, including on receipt of a new Food Registration notification, in response to a service request from the business, during routine inspections and visits, in response to a complaint, and through Primary Authority/Home Authority liaison.

The plan also addresses the control and investigation of outbreaks and food-related infectious diseases. The council works with Public Health Wales/ England in managing cases and outbreaks of food related infectious diseases. The Management and organisational arrangements for dealing with outbreaks of infectious disease are contained in 'The Communicable Disease Outbreak Plan for Wales', an All-Wales model, agreed by the NPHS and Local Authority, and subject to annual review.