Business planning

Contents

• The standards
• The requirements
• BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9

The standards

This article is written to meet the following sections of the Standards:

The requirements

Information gathering and review

The business must be able to demonstrate that it’s identified the relevant legislation and business requirements, to which it must comply.

The scope of this information must include legislation relevant to the location where the:

• Material is handled.
• Material is sold to the consumer (if known).

The business must have systems in place to ensure that the information sources it uses, is kept up to date.

Records must be kept of:

• Systematic and regular checks of the information sources for updates.
• The review, where new or updated information is identified.

Where the information sources are received and reviewed in one central place, such as a hub or head office, there must be a system to ensure that the resulting actions, are communicated out to each relevant location.

Commitment (quality) policy

 There must be a documented commitment policy in place. This policy needs to include the sites commitments to:

• Supplying materials and services that are safe, legal, authentic and to the agreed quality.
• The business’ responsibility to its customers.
• Continuous improvement.
• Improvement of product safety and quality culture.

The policy must be authorised; signed and dated by the person with overall responsibility for the business location. Where the policy is a group or business-wide policy it must be countersigned by the local management to endorse it.

The policy must be effectively communicated to all staff.

The policy must be reviewed at a set frequency and when there are changes to the way that the site is managed. The review must be documented.

The new requirements for BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 are highlighted in bold italics.

Business plan

In line with the commitments made on the policy, the business must develop a business plan. The business plan must include objectives, which maintain and improve product safety, legality, authenticity and quality.

The business plan must have:

• Defined objectives.
• SMART actions.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with targets, to measure success.

Relevant aspects of the business plan must be communicated to the staff who are responsible for them. Where the plan is developed centrally, it must be owned locally.

Your next steps

To make your life as simple as possible, we would recommend you complete the senior management commitment super course and use the senior management commitment eDocs. The eLearning and eDocs contain everything you need to comply with BRCGS section 1 for senior management commitment, including how to develop a business plan.