Supporting the Science

Multi-award winning building

The Mills Building, our Animal Services headquarters at the Weybridge site, won the prestigious Green Apple Gold Award for ‘National Green Champion in Government’. The award was presented by The Green Organisation; an independent environment group dedicated to recognising and promoting environmental best practice around the world.
The awards ceremony took place in November at the House of Commons with the award presented to us by the ultimate green champion and well known conservationist, Professor David Bellamy.

The architects, Nisbet, nominated the Mills Building for the award, which adds to a growing collection. The building has already won the South East Regional competition for the Royal Institu tion of Chartered Surveyors Sustainability Awards, was short listed for the national award and won the BREEAM National Bespoke Building Award.

First dedicated Welfare Officer

Heidi Swift was appointed as the first dedicated Welfare Officer for VLA in April 2007 and she has already established her role in being available to help staff with the challenges they face either inside or outside of work. As a collaborative arrangement we have been able to offer some of Heidi’s time to another Defra agency, the Central Science Laboratory.

VLA launches new Equality Scheme

The VLA Equality Scheme was issued setting out the policy on equality, diversity and actions for the future. During the year, the Nursery, based at VLA Weybridge, passed an Ofsted inspection and KPMG gave a ‘low risk’ assessment after auditing our recruitment practices on behalf of the Civil Service Commissioners.

A busy conference agenda

Working with scientists from across the Agency our events team have organised:

• An international conference on extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs). This provided an overview of the current situation of ESBLs in humans and animals in Europe to over 70 delegates.
• A workshop for the Veterinary Network of Laboratories Researching into Improved Diagnosis and Epidemiology of Mycobacterial Diseases (VENoMYC). This was held at the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre situated beside the Sanger Institute in Cambridge.
• The VLA Annual Conference 2007 for staff was held at Keele Conference Park, Staffordshire early in September. The first day focused on the VLA Science Audit and the second day looked at climate change and the impact on animal health. Guest speakers included John Gloster from the Met Office who talked about climate change and its effects and Phil Mellor from the Institute for Animal Health who spoke about the impact of climate change on bluetongue and arboviral diseases.

Web-based systems developed

A new VLA website was launched at the end of the year with a new structure to reflect our services and scientific disciplines. The site includes new navigation to improve accessibility and a refreshed look and feel. The home page now has a gateway to links and information on diseases and causative agents.

Although Defra hosts our main site, VLA has developed its own external web hosting environment to support a range of business applications and collaborations including Defra disease profiles and VLA commercial proficiency testing.

External web-based systems for collaboration have been led by FLU-LAB-NET; an EU funded Framework 6 Programme to deliver a private community providing enhanced collaboration facilities for veterinary and public health laboratories and scientists to discuss avian influenza.

The collaboration facilities introduced for FLU-LAB-NET have also been adapted for VLA’s TSE Community Reference Laboratory and offer a low cost option for a range of other research collaborations. Further development of VLA’s hosting environment with a focus on electronic research collaboration will be a major objective for the coming year.

Improving business systems

E-procurement is now firmly embedded throughout most of the Agency and this has improved the efficiency of purchasing processes. Useful data is now available on both VLA spending patterns and supplier performance which can be fed into contract reviews, supplier management and overall contracting strategy.

The finance and procurement system, Integra, continued to develop and is now used for reagent stock control as well as e-procurement. This has helped to reduce the number of stand-alone systems in VLA.

Collaborative procurement across Defra and wider Government became a feature of purchasing practice during the year and this is set to become more prominent along with ‘green’ procurement.

Use of VLA’s Laboratory Information System (LIMS) was provided during the year for the three concurrent disease emergencies. The AI outbreaks in both domestic poultry and wild birds happened during the scheduled implementation of SampleManager LIMS in Avian Virology and served to provide a real test for the exotics component of the LIMS. This project also encompassed an avian virology isolates repository development in dotNet. This sample archive application could offer further potential for wider use in other VLA departments.

Providing a quality service

We have built upon the success of achieving corporate certification to ISO 9001 in 2005 with two surveillance audits by Lloyds Register, which identified only seven minor nonconformities in total across VLA.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency renewed our Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) certificate in April following successful clearance of deficiencies raised at inspection. Also, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate renewed our Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certificate in April following successful clearance of findings raised at the inspection of vaccine production at VLA.

Our multi-site accreditation to ISO 17025 was expanded to include gamma interferon testing at Sutton Bonington and Luddington. Work began in late 2007 to implement processes to apply for a flexible scope of accreditation. This will allow VLA to add tests to its schedule of accreditation without a formal audit by UKAS for each test based upon similar methodologies being already accredited.

Biosecurity procedures put to the test

Impenetrable biosecurity procedures had to be implemented and maintained when our large animal accommodation fell into the FMD protection zone during the disease outbreak in Surrey. During this period, Animal Services had to complete several weekly screening bleeds of more than 1200 sheep kept at VLA under the supervision of Animal Health. It is a great credit to the staff of Animal Services that our animals remained disease free.

The FMD outbreak caused some delays to VLA’s scientific work involving animals. This led to an extremely busy last four months of the year while Animal Services tried to catch up with as many studies as possible, particularly the classical swine fever experiments. These were carried out for the first time in our Large Animal High Security Unit after the completion of SAPO licensing before the FMD outbreak.

Safety of our containment facilities

An inspection by the Health and Safety Executive of the SAPO 4 facilities at VLA Weybridge commended the quality of the buildings and safety management systems.

Our safety training programme will be supplemented by mandatory training for all staff working at high levels of containment to further develop staff knowledge. Work is also in progress on a review protocol which will ensure all ACDP containment level 3 facilities are leak tested.