Auditing expert hits out at FSA’s reforms
David Edwards, a member of the government’s better regulation panel, has attacked the FSA for being too focused on its own internal restructuring under ROF at the expense of creating a better regulatory environment for both consumers and businesses.
“They have rather focused too much in ROF on their own role, that they have missed the point of what they were there to do, which was to improve outcomes,” said Edwards.
Edwards was co-founder of food safety consultancy CMi and is now a director of food hygiene consultancy Bayesian. “They have become rather obsessed with their own role in the process and, therefore, got some things wrong.”
Plans to create a permit to trade
While supporting the “general thrust” of what the FSA was trying to achieve with the overhaul of the UK’s regulatory framework under ROF, Edwards was particularly scathing of its plans to create a permit to trade (PTT) for food business operators.
This proposal has since been watered down to an ‘enhanced registration’, scheme following recognition that the PTT idea was unlikely to get government support, claimed Edwards.
Edwards has also attacked the FSA’s plans for a new role of certified regulatory auditor as part of ROF. He is on record as describing it as a “non-starter” because it was overly complicated and failed to take account of the commercial world of private third-party auditing.
Impeded regulators
Edwards said funding cutbacks to both the FSA and local authorities, resulting in the loss of inspectors and other staff, had also impeded regulators’ ability to provide the sort of oversight that was necessary.
He was not convinced that ROF would compensate for this loss of resource. “That will have quite a significant effect on the ability of local authorities to regulate,” he said.
“I think the ROF programme is on something of a wobble. I think there are problems with regulating ROF, but mostly because some of the answers they have come up with are not going to find favour or work.”
