Executive summary
This report presents a consolidated review of Local Authority Food Law Service Plans for 2025–2026 across all 32 Scottish Local Authorities against the requirements of the Food Law Code of Practice (Scotland) 2019 and the Interventions Food Law Code of Practice (Scotland) 2019. The review assessed whether service plans referenced key Code requirements, quantified planned activity and demonstrated compliance with Code expectations.
Overall, most authorities had established service planning arrangements and demonstrated a commitment to risk-based service delivery. However, significant variation was identified in the extent to which authorities quantified service activity, reported performance outcomes and demonstrated compliance across all assessment criteria.
Key findings included:
- 91% of authorities maintained a current service plan.
- 75% demonstrated a clearly defined risk-based planning approach.
- 81% quantified staffing resources and workforce capacity.
- Only 63% quantified planned intervention activity.
- Only 47% documented out-of-hours arrangements.
- Significant variation remains in performance reporting, monitoring and governance arrangements.
System-wide issues identified included:
- workforce capacity and sustainability.
- intervention backlogs and under-delivery.
- increasing reliance on prioritised delivery models.
- growth in unrated and unknown risk businesses.
- inconsistent performance measurement and reporting; and
- increasing reactive service demands.
Despite these pressures, examples of innovation and good practice were identified in workforce development, digital transformation, performance management and adaptive risk-based service delivery.
1. Introduction
The review looks to provide assurance regarding planned food law service delivery arrangements across Scotland and assesses whether service plans demonstrate appropriate governance, resources, intervention planning and performance management.
2. Mathodology
All 32 Local Authority Service Plans were reviewed against ten core requirements derived from the Codes of Practice:
- Annual Service Plan in place.
- Defined intervention programme.
- Risk-based planning approach.
- Resource assessment.
- Revisits and follow-up arrangements.
- New business arrangements.
- Out-of-hours intervention arrangements.
- Sampling programme.
- Monitoring and performance reporting.
- Governance and review arrangements.
Assessment considered not only whether information was present within the service plan, but also whether sufficient detail was provided to demonstrate compliance with Code requirements.
Accordingly:
Compliance assessments were based on review of all 32 Local Authority Food Law Service Plans against the requirements of the Food Law Code of Practice (Scotland) 2019 and the Interventions Food Law Code of Practice (Scotland) 2019.
For consistency, findings were assessed using three categories:
- Referenced – the subject area was mentioned within the service plan.
- Quantified – numerical activity levels, workloads, outputs or performance measures were provided.
- Compliant – sufficient information was provided to demonstrate that the Code requirement had been adequately addressed.
Whilst a consistent assessment framework was applied across all authorities, professional judgement was required due to significant variation in service plan structure, format and level of detail. Findings should therefore be viewed as indicative assessments of compliance rather than absolute measures.