The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has reviewed the audit time calculator as well as ways in which audits of head offices are handled where some requirements of the BRC standards are managed centrally.

The consortium is canvassing fresh produce businesses on the subject and a response is to be co-ordinated by the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC).

The review has picked up concerns that the original calculator would result in excessively long audits for large sites or sites with large number of employees.

“There was also concern that, as the definition of a HACCP study was not clear, sites with a large number of HACCP studies - most of which were variants on a theme - would be subject to excessive audit durations. The amount of time auditors spend within the production environment relative to that spent in the offices has been an on-going concern,” the FPC said.

The review recommends that non-conformities identified at head office audits should be recorded and attributed to the associated manufacturing site audit.

It was agreed that non-conformities raised at the head office audit should be included on the next site audit only.