A review of confidence in management ratings for sites regulated by Argyll and Bute Council for both food law and health and safety law purposes identified 151 relevant sites. Ratings were strongly clustered around scores for the two food safety confidence ratings of “reasonable record of compliance” and “satisfactory record of compliance”. The coefficient of correlation between the two scores was 0.18. This study suggests that the food law confidence in management rating is a poor predictor of health and safety management performance. Reasons for this are proposed.
Transferability of Confidence in Management Ratings between Food Safety and Health and Safety Models
Patrick Mackie 
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Hello Patrick,
I’ve read the paper, very interesting. It is not a subject I have given much thought to until this moment so a more reasoned response will probably be along in time.
How useful do you think either risk rating system is in the current climate with heavy pressure from above to reduce numbers of inspections in order to reduce alleged regulatory burden on business?
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Claire,
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
I was interested in the suggestion by HSE that food safety performance could be a predictor of health and safety performance and decided to look at our own dataset to see how they compared. Not very well as it turns out.
However, I’ve been doing some more reflection on the results and will be writing more about that in due course.
I do consider risk assessment to be an essential tool in differentiating sites and assisting in prioritising interventions, although most ratings are now done at the desktop.
Patrick
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Patrick, an interesting paper and subject for research. That said, my initial reaction was that surely no realistic correlation could exist as the two subjects are too far distant in terms of skill sets and application. However, logic suggests that a good business should score well in both, so it would be interestingly see if this bears out or if genuine differences exist.
Be intereting to see a wider study undertaken possibly across Scotland or via an English region to see how the results shape out.
I feel a presentation opportunity coming on!
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Patrick I think it’s a very interesting paper and exactly the sort of practitioner research that I think we need so much more of. As Jonathan indicates, it would be great to see a wider study undertaken drawing upon more data from a particular region or consortium of local authorities.
My strong recommendation to you would be to submit the article to the newly re-launched Journal of Environmental Health Research (if you haven’t already) – email to Chris Day c.day at cieh.org is probably the easiest way. It’s the nature of research that we’re never happy with the outcome of what we’ve done – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile in trying to get it published and spreading the message. Equally if a potential barrier to further development is concerns about more detailed analysis (often the case although for all I know you may be a statistics wizard!) then I’d also encourage you to engage with one of the environmental health teams in UK academia – I’m sure you’ll get a positive response and some support. The UK Environmental Health Research Network would probably be a good place to start. http://ukehrnet.wordpress.com/author/ukehrnet/
[Declaration of interest: I am an environmental health academic. Clarification: confidence in management isn’t really my field although I’m more than happy to assist with general queries on research methods and statistics!]
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Thank you Alastair – it’s very encouraging to get comments like yours. There’s a wee bit more work I’d like to do on it before I punt it up to Chris, so watch this space!
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