Chief Executive's Overview
"As one of the world’s leading veterinary laboratories, VLA has had another successful year in 2004’05. We continued to deliver our scientific services, whether surveillance, consultancy, diagnostic tests or research, to the highest standards whilst also addressing and meeting our demanding business objectives."
VLA values its International Reference Laboratory status for a wide range of infectious and non-infectious diseases in farm animals. As an EU Community Reference Laboratory for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs) we play a lead role, sharing our expertise via training workshops, meetings, enhancing the VLA website www.vla.gov.uk as a source of reference material and providing advice to other member states.
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Our position as an OIE/FAO/EU Reference Laboratory for avian influenza, has led to a key, ongoing role in the current outbreak of H5N1 in South East Asia. We have provided consultancy, advice and reagents to a number of laboratories in that region.
Our strong collaborative links with similar organisations across the world have been further strengthened by the launch of Med-Vet-Net in September 2004. Med-Vet-Net is a network of excellence, linking veterinary and public health laboratories across Europe to work on the prevention and control of zoonoses, including food borne diseases. Within the UK, this has also contributed to our growing partnership with the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
In June 2004, Defra, the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government launched the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy for Great Britain. This strategy has set the scene for our future as a key delivery agent, working in partnership with the State Veterinary Service (SVS) and other delivery bodies, to meet the aspirations of Defra as the lead Department. However, we continue to develop our own Agency strategy in order to make the best use of our Regional Laboratory network to ensure there is a collective ambition to achieve common goals. Our joint approach to emergency response was well illustrated in March 2005, when we ran a successful desktop simulation exercise to test our preparedness for an outbreak of classical swine fever in the UK. This involved other stakeholders including Defra, SVS and the Institute for Animal Health (IAH).
"The new Stewart Stockman laboratory will provide 'state of the art' facilities for high throughput serological testing."
Business targets, set by Defra Ministers, were met in full, including full cost recovery, meeting a range of efficiency targets and developing options to address Government demands as part of the Gershon Efficiency Review. Our contribution to this, as part of a wider Government initiative will assume increasing importance over the next three years.
This year, we developed new service delivery measures and set a baseline for monitoring surveillance projects. A particular achievement was the improvement of our overall customer satisfaction score from 69.5% last year to 80% this year.
Quality continues to be a high priority and compliance with the Defra, Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Joint Code of Practice for Research was achieved. We also successfully maintained all our current third party quality certifications and plan to complete ISO 9001 right across the Agency by the end of next year. This illustrates our commitment to continual improvement.
As part of the Government’s ‘Sustainable Development in Government’ initiative, we obtained ISO 14001 certification at our Weybridge site. We plan to extend the certification across the Agency in the coming months and we are committed to sustainable working in all aspects of our daily operations.
January 2005, saw the introduction of the ‘access to information’ legislation - the Freedom of Information Act and the revised Environmental Information Regulations. New procedures to cover this legislation were introduced and we have received a modest number of requests for information, which I believe shows we were already openly sharing a great deal of information with our customers and the general public.
During the course of the year we have continued to ensure an excellent health and safety ethos across the Agency. This is founded on accurate and timely communication, relevant training available for everyone and auditing systems for compliance with local rules and national legislation. The effectiveness of our safety management from Board level through to our Departmental Safety Advisors is audited by enforcement agencies. The Health and Safety Executive review work practices for hazardous pathogens and Defra monitor the containment facilities for highly transmissible exotic animal diseases. Their inspections over the past year have been very encouraging.
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| The Stewart Stockman Building |
Looking forward, 2005 will be an exciting
year for VLA as in October we celebrate 10 years as an Agency. As part of those celebrations a new laboratory
complex, the Stewart Stockman Building, was opened in May by Dr Debby Reynolds,
the Chief Veterinary Officer. This new laboratory will provide ‘state
of the art’ facilities
for high throughput serological testing, including an innovative design that
enables switching between animal disease containment levels 2 and 4 according
to the needs of the work. This will hugely enhance the UK’s contingency
readiness for major animal disease outbreaks.
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| Debby Reynolds - Chief Veterinary Officer, Steve Edwards, Tony Little - VLA's first CEO and Steve Dean - CEO of the Veterinary Medicines Directorate at the official opening of the Stewart Stockman Laboratory |
The new building will also provide outstanding new research and diagnostic facilities for our world-class tuberculosis team, including a suite of containment level 3 laboratories designed both to protect the safety of our scientists and to prevent accidental contamination of the environment. The name of the building recognises the formative influence of Sir Stewart Stockman, Chief Veterinary Officer and Director of Research at the time when the Central Veterinary Laboratory was first established at the Weybridge site in 1917.
We are also delighted to have gained agreement to proceed with an exciting new venture, working jointly with the IAH to develop a new VLA/IAH Virology Laboratory complex. This will create a unique centre of excellence in animal virology for the UK.
As we look to the future, we continue to focus on Defra’s five-year strategy of ‘Delivering the Essentials of Life’. We also recognise our role in supporting other Government Departments such as the Food Standards Agency, while not neglecting our private sector customers and our responsibilities to the wider public as contributors to science within society.
Professor Steve Edwards
Chief Executive
