Management system policy statements

The management and staff of UK Farmcare Limited are fully committed to the provision of quality assured, consistent and cost-effective delivery systems for livestock health management support services and in particular, bovine tuberculosis (TB) surveillance, which takes due account of relevant legislation, animal health and welfare, customer requirements and the need to maintain high levels of national confidence with regard to services and the assurance that outcomes are valid and reliable.

All staff are aware of this policy and commit to fully comply with its requirements. All personnel have read only or read/write access to the latest revision of management system documentation.

The implementation of BS EN ISO 9001 throughout the organisation will serve as a framework for the achievement of this vision and ensure continual improvement of the effectiveness of the quality management system.

QUALITY OBJECTIVES

• Targets and objectives have been identified and are managed and reviewed monthly.
• The management system has been designed to promote continual improvement by review and monitoring.
• Quarterly meetings are held with all staff affording them the opportunity to have input to quality performance/improvement.
• to ensure conformity to customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements through the effective application of this Quality Management System
• to enhance customer satisfaction through the application of associated procedures to review and improve the Quality Management System
• to effectively manage the availability of resources, information and training and development necessary to support the operation, monitoring and review of these processes

The management and staff of UK Farmcare Limited are fully committed to protecting the environment, and the policy and procedures contained in this document which details its compliance with applicable legal and other requirements preventing pollution and improving environmental performance.

All staff are aware of this policy and commit to fully comply with its requirements. All personnel have read only or read/write access to the latest revision of management system documentation.

UK Farmcare Limited recognises the need for sustainable development and to plan, implement, monitor, review and evaluate its activities so as to minimise resultant potential adverse effects on the environment.

UK Farmcare Limited takes matters concerning the environment very seriously. It aims to meet and, where possible, exceed all relevant legal requirements that apply to its activities under the scope of this document.

The Directors of UK Farmcare Limited are fully committed to the Environmental Management System and will encourage employee environmental awareness and responsibility through staff training and development, communication and active participation.

The Directors of UK Farmcare Limited will include environmental consideration in their strategic planning thus ensuring adequate financial, human and physical resources are available to maintain and increase capacity to respond flexibly to revised environmental targets and changing legislation.

Targets and objectives have been identified and are managed and reviewed monthly.

The management system has been designed to promote continual improvement by review and monitoring.

Quarterly meetings are held with all staff affording them the opportunity to have input to environmental performance/improvement.

 

The Directors of UK Farmcare Limited will provide for effective use of resources by;

• promoting the efficient use of resources, energy and fuel throughout the company’s operations
• minimising waste by reusing or recycling resources as appropriate

 

UK Farmcare Limited will work closely with suppliers, sub-contractors and customers to publicise its commitment to environmental issues and to promote a joint approach to environmental impact reduction and continual improvement.

This environmental policy will be reviewed annually unless circumstances dictate otherwise.

UK Farmcare Ltd (the Employer) takes health and safety issues seriously and is fully committed to protecting the health and safety of our staff and those who could be harmed by our activities.

To achieve this commitment the Company has implemented a management system designed to meet the requirements of ISO 45001 and all legal and other requirements. The system has been fully implemented and all personnel have been made aware of their duties and responsibilities. All personnel have read only or read/write access to the latest revision of management system documentation.

Foreseeable hazards and risks have been identified and actions taken to mitigate them have been documented and made known to all necessary persons. Opportunities have been identified and recorded.

Targets and objectives have been identified and are managed and reviewed monthly.

The management system has been designed to promote continual improvement by review and monitoring.

Quarterly meetings are held with all staff affording them the opportunity to have input to health and safety performance/improvement.

Achieving a healthy and safe workplace is a collective task shared between the employer and staff. This policy and the rules contained in it apply to all staff, irrespective of seniority, and consultants.

This statement of policy may be amended by the Employer at its absolute discretion.

UK Farmcare Ltd is committed to good professional practice and the continual improvement of processes and services to achieve ongoing customer satisfaction. It is therefore our policy to:

• Consistently provide quality in-service audits that conform to customer and regulatory requirements
• Ensure that all personnel are competent and qualified for the tasks they perform, and that all personnel familiarise themselves with management system documentation in order to implement the policies and procedures in their work
• Professionally and effectively perform in-service audits to produce accurate and precise results
• Consistently comply with ISO/IEC 17020 through compliance with the Management System to ensure quality in-service auditing, and to continually improve the effectiveness of the Management System
• It is UK Farmcare Ltd’s goal to encourage active participation of all employees in quality planning and continual improvement efforts to meet all quality and service
• Comply with all legal and other requirements that apply to the organisation’s operations
• Determine, meet and, where possible, exceed the requirements of customers and other interested parties
• Ensure the protection of customer confidential information and proprietary rights, including the electronic storage and transmission of results

Targets and objectives have been identified and are managed and reviewed monthly.

The management system has been designed to promote continual improvement by review and monitoring.

Quarterly meetings are held with all staff affording them the opportunity to have input to inspection performance/improvement.

UK Farmcare Ltd is committed to good professional practice, the quality of its testing services and the continual improvement of processes and services to achieve ongoing customer satisfaction. It is therefore our policy to:

• Consistently provide quality testing services that conform to customer and regulatory requirements
• Ensure that all personnel are competent and qualified for the tasks they perform, and that all personnel familiarise themselves with management system documentation in order to implement the policies and procedures in their work
• Professionally and effectively perform testing services to produce accurate and precise results
• Consistently comply with ISO/IEC 17025 through compliance with the Management System to ensure quality testing services, and to continually improve the effectiveness of the Management System
• It is UK Farmcare Ltd’s goal to encourage active participation of all employees in quality planning and continual improvement efforts to meet all quality and service requirements.
• Comply with all legal and other requirements that apply to the organisation’s operations
• Determine, meet and where possible exceed the requirements of customers and other interested parties
• Ensure the protection of customer confidential information and proprietary rights, including the electronic storage and transmission of results

Targets and objectives have been identified and are managed and reviewed monthly.

The management system has been designed to promote continual improvement by review and monitoring.

Quarterly meetings are held with all staff affording them the opportunity to have input to testing performance/improvement.

One of UK Farmcare Ltd’s core values is its commitment to impartiality. It is therefore essential for UK Farmcare Ltd to manage any potential conflict of interest to safeguard impartiality in all of its activities.

The Company offers no financial or other incentives to personnel involved in the inspection and testing process.

UK Farmcare Ltd have in place safeguards that mitigate or eliminate threats to impartiality including procedures and risk assessment.

UK Farmcare Ltd fully understands the importance of impartiality in carrying out its Management System and testing and inspection activities and its policies and procedures are designed to manage any conflict of interest and to ensure the objectivity of our management system and testing and inspection activities.

Impartiality During Auditing and Testing Activities is based on objective evidence obtained through a fair, valid reliable assessment and shall not be influenced by other interests or by other parties.

Impartiality is not restricted or compromised on the grounds of financial or other limiting conditions.

Threats to impartiality shall not be tolerated and any auditor/tester/ who feels threatened shall immediately terminate the activity and report the facts to the Business Management Director and/or the Veterinary Services Director who shall carry out an investigation and act on the findings.

Threats include:

• self-interest threats: threats that arise from a person or body acting in its own interest to benefit itself
• subjectivity threats: threats that arise when personal bias overrules objective evidence
• familiarity threats: threats that arise from a person being familiar with or trusting of another person, e.g. an examiner or certification body personnel developing a relationship with a candidate that affects the ability to reach an objective judgement
• intimidation threats: threats that prevent a certification body or its personnel from acting objectively due to fear of a candidate or other interested party
• financial threats: the source of revenue for a certification body can be a threat to impartiality

The Company promotes a culture that stresses the expectation that staff will act in the wider interest and the importance of impartiality.

The maintenance of effective policies and procedures is reviewed at least annually as part of the management review.

Significant changes to the Management System, company organisation or interested parties shall be assessed to determine continuing impartiality and when necessary actions to address the findings shall be implemented and verified.

All personnel shall be made aware of this policy and the importance of impartiality and what actions to take in the event of a threat.

The purpose of this Policy statement is to ensure that everyone working on behalf of UK Farmcare Ltd is aware of their responsibilities when using confidential information.

The principle underpinning this Policy statement is that no employee shall misuse any information or allow others to do so.

The Policy statement has been written to support staff in compliance with the following legal requirements and best practice guidance:

• Data Protection Act
• Human Rights Act
• GDPR

This Policy statement applies to all personal identifiable information, whether written, computerised or visual, or simply held in the memory of a member of staff. It applies equally to staff on permanent, temporary or voluntary placement.

Information about staff, which is processed for the purpose of their employment should be treated as confidential. Confidentiality should only be breached in exceptional circumstances and with appropriate justification. All staff should ensure that the following principles are practised:

When you are responsible for confidential information you must make sure that the information is effectively protected against improper disclosure when it is received, stored, transmitted or disposed of. Confidential information must only be accessed by you if it is appropriate to the job that you are employed to undertake;

If you are required to disclose information outside the team that could have personal consequences for an individual, you must obtain their consent. If the individual withholds consent, or if consent cannot be obtained for whatever reason, disclosures may be made only where they can be justified in the public interest or if they are required by law or by order of a court

If you are required to disclose confidential information you should release only as much information as is necessary for the purpose.

You must make sure that the persons to whom you disclose information understand that it is given to them in confidence which they must respect.

If you decide to disclose confidential information, you must be prepared to explain and justify your decision. If you have any doubts discuss them with your line manager.

Any queries concerning this policy statement should be brought to the attention of your line manager in the first instance.

Your contract of employment includes a commitment to confidentiality. Breaches of confidentiality could be regarded as gross misconduct and may result in serious disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.

Any failure to maintain confidentiality shall be recorded on a nonconformity report and immediately escalated to Senior Management who will:

• determine and implement action to resolve the issue
• investigate and determine the root cause
• determine actions necessary to prevent recurrence
• feedback to interested parties
• ensure that any actions taken have been fully and effectively implemented

Documentation (internal and external) that relates to the fulfilment of the Management System standards is stored either electronically or in hard copy. The documentation held electronically is stored on cloud-based system Sharepoint, accessed via Office365. When an individual logs into SharePoint, they are accessing live documents, so updates are automatically synchronised, thus ensuring that the latest revision of a document is available to all necessary personnel. All documents are marked Uncontrolled Copy When Printed.

The Company has achieved and will maintain Cyber Essentials Plus Certification to further enhance its security arrangements.

When expired or no longer needed, electronic documents and records will be archived or deleted at the discretion of the Quality Assurance Manager.

At the discretion of the Business Management Director and/or Veterinary Services Director, expired or obsolete hard copies shall be shredded and sent for recycling.

Security Statement

The Company shall:

• put measures in place to ensure that awareness of data protection will enable breaches to be reported more easily
• issue guidance on how to report PII breaches for analysis, categorisation and response
• provide resource to analyse reported PII breaches to identify those that are incidents requiring a structured response
• assemble breach response teams with a defined responsibility assignment matrix, as required, to contain and recover from security incidents
• ensure that its contemporaneous logs of incidents are kept
• hold periodic post resolution lessons learned meetings to focus on trends and improvements to reduce the likelihood and impact of recurrence, as appropriate

 

The Company recognises that in some instances PII breaches are beyond its reasonable control and the importance of being prepared for such eventualities.

The Company shall ensure that it reacts appropriately to any actual or suspected PII breaches.

UK Farmcare Ltd recognises that a structured response to PII breaches has a number of clear benefits to it including:

• Improving overall PII security
• Reducing adverse business impacts
• Strengthening the PII breach prevention focus
• Strengthening prioritisation
• Strengthening evidence collection and custody arrangements
• Contributing to budget and resource justifications
• Improving updates to information governance risk assessment and risk management
• Providing PII security awareness and training material
• Providing input to PII security policy reviews via lessons learned.

 

Any failure to maintain security shall be recorded on a nonconformity report and immediately escalated to Senior Management who will:

• determine and implement action to resolve the issue
• investigate and determine the root cause
• determine actions necessary to prevent recurrence
• feedback to interested parties
• ensure that any actions taken have been fully and effectively implemented

Aim of the procedure:

 

• Explain the concepts of harassment
• Set out expected standards of behaviour
• Set out procedures you should follow if you have a harassment complaint

 

Scope of the procedure:

All of UK Farmcare including employees, consultants, sub-contractors and suppliers.

 

Responsibility for the procedure:

Senior management

 

Exceptions:

None

 

 

Bullying and Harassment

Bullying is unwanted behaviour from a person or group that is one of the following:

 

• Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting

 

• An abuse or misuse of power that undermines, humiliates or causes physical or emotional harm

 

Bullying can take many different forms. Examples of bullying behaviour include:

• Spreading malicious rumours about someone
• Consistently putting someone down and undermining them
• Deliberately giving someone a heavier workload than everyone else
• Excluding someone from team social events

 

Bullying can involve a pattern of behaviour or a one-off incident. It can happen face-to-face, online, by phone or in writing. It can be verbal and non-verbal. It is not always obvious to others.

 

Although bullying is often connected to a power imbalance, that does not mean that it always involves a more senior person bullying a more junior person. It can also be directed at someone more senior than the bully. It may take the form of spreading rumours, refusing to follow instructions, undermining authority, making fun of or mocking the more senior person or spreading rumours about them.

 

Constructive and fair feedback about your behaviour or performance from your manager or colleagues is not bullying. It is part of normal employment and management functions.

 

 

What is ‘harassment’?

When bullying or unwanted behaviour is about certain protected characteristics under discrimination law, then we refer to it as ‘harassment’. The protected characteristics which apply are:

• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Gender reassignment
• Age
• Disability

 

 

Discrimination law also recognises sexual harassment as something separate to sex (i.e. female or male) harassment. Sexual Harassment occurs when:

• A person is subjected to unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of either violating their dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile or degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.
• A person is treated less favourably because they submitted to or rejected that unwanted conduct.

 

Examples of sexual harassment:

• Unwanted physical contact, or conduct which is intimidating, or physically or verbally abusive. Harassment can also be non-verbal, for example, staring or gestures;
• Suggestions that sexual favours may further a person’s career, or that refusal may hinder it;
• Sexual advances, propositions, suggestions or pressure for sexual activity at or outside work;
• Derogatory or demeaning remarks based on gender, or the display of sexually explicit material in the workplace.

 

Behaviour can still be harassment even if the person being harassed does not complain or ask for it to stop.

 

Even if you did not intend to harass someone, if your behaviour has this effect on someone else, then you may be found to have harassed them. They may only be a bystander to behaviour you directed at someone else, but they may still have been harassed.

 

The law protects people who are harassed because they are thought to have a certain protected characteristic when they do not or they are linked to someone who has a certain protected characteristic even if they don’t have it themselves.

 

 

 

Third party harassment

Following the amendment of the Worker Protection (amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act (in force from 26^th October 2024) this makes it clear that the new duty to prevent sexual harassment applies to harassment by third parties as well as workers, as such:

 

• We want to create a workplace which is free of harassment. This objective extends beyond acts of harassment by those working for us to harassment by third parties such as farmers, visitors, suppliers, TB Testers, Veterinary Personnel.

 

• You are encouraged to report any third-party harassment you are a victim of, or witness, in accordance with this Policy.

 

• We will take active steps to prevent third-party harassment of staff. Actions may include recording phone calls and notifying all third parties with this policy.

 

• We will assess the risk of third-party harassment in the workplace and undertake to keep our risk assessment under regular review. We encourage you to come forward with any areas in which you believe our third-party harassment protection could be improved.

 

• If any third-party harassment of staff occurs, we will take steps to remedy any complaints and to prevent it happening again. Action may include warning the harasser about their behaviour, banning them from our premises, removing any contracts held with us and reporting any criminal acts to the police.

 

 

 

Expected standards of behaviour

We have clear standards for workplace conduct, these include, but are not limited to:

 

• Bad and/or offensive language or gestures of any nature should not be used in the workplace, whether directed at a particular person or not.

 

• Inappropriate images or other content should not be viewed or shared at work.

 

• You should never invade colleagues’ personal space.

 

• You should not exclude colleagues unfairly from discussions or events.

 

• You should not use crude humour.

 

• You should not use an aggressive tone or aggressive language when speaking with colleagues.

 

• You should not be physically aggressive towards colleagues.

 

• You should not make sexually suggestive comments

 

• You should not mock, mimic or belittle colleagues in relation to any protected characteristic or otherwise

 

• You should not gossip about your colleagues.

The standards of conduct and zero tolerance of harassment in the workplace apply to the following areas:

 

• at work
• during any situation related to work such as at a social event with colleagues
• against a colleague or other person connected to the employer outside of a work situation, including on social media
• against anyone outside of a work situation where the incident is relevant to your suitability to carry out your role.

 

RA 15 Sexual Harassment Risk Assessment has been established to demonstrate the possible risks and the control measures in place.

 

 

Raising a complaint

If you believe you are the subject of or have witnessed harassment you can make a complaint by reporting this to either Vicki Stewart, Business Management Director or Kate Bowen, Veterinary Director.

All complaints will be taken seriously and for harassment arising from both internal and from a third party, an investigation will be conducted. You can raise a problem either informally or raise a grievance (a formal complaint) although some situations may be too serious to deal with informally. For internal instances, if a complaint is upheld, the disciplinary procedure as outlined in the Staff Handbook may apply. For third parties, measures could include ceasing the relationship with the third party in some circumstances and will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. We will do all that we can to resolve the complaint of harassment sensitively, impartially, effectively and quickly. There will be no victimisation of any employee for making or supporting or assisting a complaint of harassment – even if the complaint is not upheld – provided the complaint was made in good faith.

 

 

Support for anyone affected by sexual harassment

At UK Farmcare, your wellbeing is important to us and we encourage anyone who is affected by sexual harassment to use the helpline within the Healthshield provision to gain help and support. Also, the Samaritans https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/ are a valuable source of support.

 

Time off due to sexual harassment:

As a complainant, you may need time off to help deal with any sexual harassment complaint, including attending appointments for specialist support and general sickness absence. This would not form part of the absence management trigger points and all time off will need to be notified to either Vicki Stewart, Business Management Director or Kate Bowen, Veterinary Director. UK Farmcare Ltd recognises this would be a difficult time and will do what they can to help.