Performance Report Q4 2025-26
Published 25 June 2026
Applies to England, Northern Ireland and Wales
© Crown copyright 2026
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fsa-bc-260604-performance-report-q4-2025-26/performance-report-q4-2025-26
1. Summary
1.1 Q4 performance across the Food Standards Agency remained broadly strong despite sustained work pressures. High volumes of food and feed safety incidents have been managed effectively, including our ongoing response to a non-routine infant formula incident arising in January 2026. Trade and International activity also remained broadly on track, despite resource pressures associated with audit delivery. Local authority delivery continues to present a persistent area of risk. Elsewhere, delivery across regulated products reflected the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) context, and a significant level of communications activity focused on incident response and consumer engagement was sustained during the quarter.
2. Introduction
2.1 The performance dashboard supports the Committee in scrutinising quarterly performance and monitoring key risks, escalating issues where needed. The Committee is invited to review this update, which should be read in conjunction with the slides.
3. Evidence and Discussion – Key themes and insights:
3.1 Market Authorisations of Regulated Products
a. The caseload reduced from 417 to 404. 17 contacts were received, which is the lowest since the service began and notably, only one since the Defra announcement on UK-EU SPS agreement on 9 March. This quarter we concluded 17 safety assessments, seven applications were authorised, and a further 21 applications exited the service via invalidation and withdrawal routes. We are actively progressing around 85 applications in accordance with the prioritisation principles agreed by the FSA and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) Boards and Health Ministers in December 2025.
b. On 12 March, communications were sent to approximately 600 trade associations, applicants and authorisation holders containing important information about the impact of the planned UK-EU SPS Agreement. Applicants were notified how the progress of their applications would be affected by principles agreed by the Board and Ministers. In line with these principles, we aim to conclude FSA activity on up to 50 applications in 2026/27, subject to FSS constraints with resourcing. Delivery plans continue to be reviewed accordingly. Market authorisation resource remains significantly impacted as we work to prepare for the planned UK-EU SPS Agreement.
c. Defra has started receiving Precision Bred Organism (PBO) notifications; the applications may make their way into the service shortly. The PBO Business Support Service has received one request for advice ahead of planned application submission to the service.
3.2 Trade
a. Trade and International activity stayed broadly on track in Q4. The FSA hosted 2 audits during the period. The pre work, hosting of the audit and response to audit recommendations creates resource pressures, which are managed through working to stagger audit timetables / areas of audit and short-term reprioritisation of work. Imported food trends show a further rise in consignments at the border failing documentary and identity checks as well as chemical checks, particularly herbs, spices and fresh produce from India, Kenya, Turkey and the Dominican Republic. This greater failure rate may reflect the increased number of checks now being performed at the border, including on Rest of World goods entering GB via the EU. All planned international engagements were delivered, strengthening key global relationships.
3.3 People
a. Representation of Ethnic Minority colleagues remains unchanged and falls below the Civil Service Benchmark, which rises annually. We are continuing to explore best practice across government to improve representation, and in summer 2026, will run a trial interview skills training program designed to strengthen interviewer practice. Additionally, we are continuing efforts to increase data accuracy for all protected characteristics and carers/socio economic background with our annual declaration campaign.
3.4 Finance
a. Finances for 2025/26, the FSA’s provisional spend was £154.4m against available funding of £158.7m, representing a £4.3m (3%) net underspend for the Agency as a whole. £3.6m of the underspend relates to Westminster, £0.2m for Wales and £0.4m for Northern Ireland. Budgets are not interchangeable between countries (footnote 1).
b. The majority of this underspend relates to Westminster budgets where we had been holding contingency centrally to mitigate financial risks, including a material risk relating to the VAT treatment on digital services. The VAT risk could still crystalise and would reduce the reported level of underspend significantly. Even without that risk crystalising, this is the second lowest underspend against our Westminster budget in the past 5 years. Recommendations on improvements to our forecasting performance are under EMT consideration.
c. For 2026/27, we were successful in our bid to HM Treasury for additional resources to support work on the SPS agreement, funding totalling £4.7m was received in April. This has provided essential funding for the FSA’s work on the SPS agreement and in turn allowed funding for critical priorities previously unable to be properly resourced.
4. Other areas of interest
4.1 Broader activity across Operational Delivery, Science, Trade and International and Resources remained largely on track in Q4. Key points to note are:
a. The infant formula recall linked to a potential contamination with cereulide received widespread attention, with the recall communications generating over 1,000 pieces of media coverage and 6 million social media impressions. Ninety percent of parents with children under 2 years old were aware of the recalls, and 96% of those who used infant formula took action - such as checking batch numbers - as a result. Social media channels proved essential to this awareness, with 55% of those aware of the recall learning about it from social media, compared with 45% hearing about it on the news. This reverses previous trends in awareness (for example, in the peanut/mustard incident), where news media has traditionally dominated.
b. The National Food Crime Unit met all revised 25/26 stretch targets except the percentage of closed operations leading to an outcome, which achieved 67% against a 70% target.
c. Dairy Hygiene inspections have returned to Green, in line with the trajectory set out in Q1 with the backlog created by earlier changes to official controls now cleared. Raw Cows’ Drinking Milk (RCDM) sampling identified three pathogen failures across two farms in Q4. Both farms paused sales while corrective actions were implemented and verified.
d. Local authority data remains largely the same as reported in our Q3 report. Overall, the performance continues to remain ‘Red’ rated in several areas due to persistent pressures, including staffing constraints, rising numbers of unrated premises, and delays in Food Standards Delivery Model readiness. These include variations from across the nations. Further detail on this data set was provided in the March 2026 Board paper on local authorities.
e. Our science work progresses to plan. The annual science performance and impact report approach has been agreed with our Chief Scientific Advisor; Ian Young and we will provide the first version to business committee in June (and annually at the same time each year). Once this first annual report has been discussed we will determine which, metrics are still useful to provide on a quarterly basis.
f. Communications activity in Q4 supported delivery of the FSA’s core objectives, with strong coverage demonstrating effective incident response, enforcement action, industry engagement and progress on longer term regulatory reform. This included the infant formula recall as well as coverage of significant food crime enforcement and work to support growth in the UK wine sector.
4.2 Matters relating to both post implementation reviews regulatory and internal audits will be considered at the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee.
5. Conclusions
5.1 Overall delivery in Q4 remained broadly strong. High incident demand was managed effectively, supported by surge capacity, with work underway to use PRISM data to inform tolerances and KPI measures for 2026/27. Local authority delivery remains a persistent risk, reflecting ongoing capacity pressures, rising numbers of unrated premises and readiness for the Food Standards Delivery Model. Other matters to note include continued SPS-related pressures on regulated products delivery, resource pressures in trade activity linked to inward audit delivery, strong public communications during a significant global recall, and a year-end underspend, the size of which is subject to material uncertainty around the VAT treatment of digital services.
5.2 The Business Committee is invited to consider whether current mitigation measures remain sufficient in these areas.