Half a day, on a date you do not know.
You get a fortnight window. We turn up inside it, unannounced, because an audit you can prepare for measures preparation rather than practice.
What happens on the day.
We arrive without warning, inside a stated fortnight
You know the fortnight. You do not know the day. If it is genuinely impossible — a wedding cake order, a lambing week — you get one deferral a cycle, no questions.
We walk the process from raw material to pack
In the order it happens, not in the order the paperwork is filed.
We pick three products and read the labels aloud
Then ask you to evidence every claim on them. This takes about an hour and it is where most findings come from.
We follow one ingredient back one step
Chosen by us, on the day. A delivery note is enough. A verbal assurance is not.
We look at the last twelve months of things going wrong
Complaints, returns, failed batches, anything binned. A producer with no record of anything going wrong in a year is a producer who is not writing it down.
We write the findings up before we leave
On paper, signed by both, one copy each. Nothing is sent later and nothing is decided in an office.
What happens when something fails.
| Finding | What follows | Effect on the register |
|---|---|---|
| A label claim that cannot be evidenced | Corrected before the next print run, evidenced by photograph | Stays current |
| A missing traceability document | Produced within seven days | Stays current |
| Food hygiene rating of 3 | A conversation, and a re-audit at six months rather than twelve | Stays current, shorter cycle |
| Food hygiene rating below 3 | The mark is suspended until the rating recovers | Lapsed |
| Expired public liability cover | Suspended the same day | Lapsed |
| A clause nine failure — we found out elsewhere | Removal from the register | Removed |
| Refusal of entry on the day | One deferral allowed; a second refusal is a removal | Removed |
| Audit date passed with no visit booked | Automatic lapse after sixty days | Lapsed |
Who does the auditing, and why that is a weakness.
Two people from this estate, neither of whom is a qualified auditor and both of whom have a commercial relationship with the producer they are auditing. That is a conflict of interest and there is no point pretending otherwise.
The mitigations are thin but real: no money changes hands, the findings are written on the day in front of the producer, and the register is public so anybody can see the pass rate. The strongest mitigation is that a scheme run by a shop that stakes its whole proposition on provenance has more to lose from a soft audit than from a hard one.
A properly independent scheme would be better. It would also cost money, which would mean charging producers, which would mean the register became a list of who could afford it. We have chosen the conflict we can see over the one we cannot.
The audit record so far.
This is a demonstration build
Nothing on this site takes payment. Trade ordering, applications and audits described here are demonstrations of how the process would run, not live systems, and no card or bank details are collected anywhere. The register, the standard and this process describe how the scheme is designed to run. They are published here so the design can be argued with.
The audit, at a glance.
A fortnight window
You know the fortnight, not the day.
Three labels read aloud
And every claim evidenced.
Findings on paper
Signed on the day, one copy each.
Two auditors
Neither independent, and we say so.
The register itself.
Twelve holders, two of them lapsed, all of them dated.
