Banbridge

The Council had arrangements in place to ensure that its premises database was kept up-to-date and the database was found to be complete in that respect.

The computerised system used by the Council was capable of providing all of the information required by the Agency monitoring returns. However, significant inaccuracies were identified in the official returns submitted. The coding structure for enforcement activities did not differentiate between planned and unplanned inspections and this appeared to be a contributory factor to inaccuracies in the Council�s returns. Enforcement actions, including voluntary surrenders, formal cautions and prosecutions, had been significantly under reported due to the information relevant to these actions not being entered on the database.

Access to the database to add and amend data was in theory restricted to trained administrative officers. There was however evidence that an officer, who had not been trained on the procedures for data entry, had entered data onto the database. This had resulted in corruption of the information held on the database and high-risk premises being omitted from planned inspection programmes.

The Service did not have adequate procedures in place for internal monitoring of food enforcement activities. Minimal checks were carried out by the Service to verify correct data entry and coding of activities on the database. Internal monitoring of officer outputs was inadequate to ensure that premises were risk-rated correctly and that up-to-date and accurate information was maintained on the database.

The Service was not carrying out proper checks on all sections of the monitoring form when compiling its monitoring returns and had not provided the information requested by the Agency to allow inspection data submitted for 2003/2004 to be fully validated. However, the Service recognised the need to introduce systems to ensure the thorough checking and validation of data held on the database and entered on monitoring forms, to ensure that accurate returns are submitted to the Agency.

Arrangements were in place to ensure that the database was protected from loss of information however the password protection system used to prevent corruption of data was inadequate. There was evidence that unauthorised access had been gained to the database by abuse of the password system.