Hampton Principle

No inspection should take place without a reason

Regulators' Compliance Code

• To ensure that inspections and other visits only occur in accordance with a risk assessment methodology except where visits are requested or is acting on relevant intelligence.
• To use only a small element of random inspection in their programme to test risk methodologies or the effectiveness of their interventions.
• To focus their greatest inspection effort where risk assessment shows a compliance breach or breaches that pose a serious risk to a regulatory outcome and there is a high likelihood of non-compliance.
• To give positive feedback following a visit or inspection and share all good practices.
• To make arrangements for joint or co-ordinated inspections and data sharing when visits by two or more inspectors take place on the same regulated entity.

Enforcement Policy

Animal Health, along with Defra and other members of the Defra network, is responsible for enforcing a wide range of legal obligations. Animal Health is currently included in Defra’s Enforcement Policy statement which sets out the general principles we follow in relation to regulation and its enforcement options when legal obligations are breached. In these cases a proportionate and risk-based approach is deployed.

Evidence of changes made to programmes, programmes delivered or ways in which activities are run that reflects the code:

The larger part of Animal Health work is classed as surveillance rather than inspections. For the main part this surveillance is risk based such as the TB testing regime where a testing pattern for individual herds or groups of herds in a geographical area is designed based on a number of factors including disease incidence in the area. Where true inspections are required e.g. Animal By Product Plants, a risk based regime has been developed and employed but now needs developing to widen the risk factors involved.

Circumstances where the Code’s provisions are either not relevant or are outweighed by other relevant considerations

Many of Defra’s policies derive from Europe and there is often little discretion over the approach to be adopted to the implementation of EU regulations, including inspection regimes. Animal Health works closely with Defra to influence the development of EU policy at an early stage and to ensure that where opportunities are provided for a risk based approach these are exploited to the maximum.

Future work and long term ambitions that will reflect the code

The On-farm Inspections Project: A pilot project is planned to ‘piggy back’ Cattle Identification Inspections on the back of LVI TB testing visits thus both reducing the number of potential visits to a cattle holding and ensuring that when cattle are gathered together for a statutory purpose as many requirements as possible are completed at the same time.