The Environmental Health Manager, Mr. Colin Alborough to provide an
update on food safety.
Minutes:
The
Panel welcomed Mr. Colin Alborough, Environmental Health Manager, and Mr.
Oliver Robinson, Principal Food Safety Officer, who attended the meeting to
give the Panel an update on the Council’s Food Safety Policy including emerging
issues and demand.
The
Panel were made aware of a number of new issues and initiatives, including new
legislation around food allergies and intolerances, food labels would highlight
in “bold”, food types that could cause allergic reactions and intolerances,
such as nuts, wheat, milk etc. The Government had also produced “eatwell – your guide to healthy eating”, the guide included
eight top tips covering all aspects of eating a healthy balanced diet. It was
advised that there had also been a new two stage cleaning process introduced to
help combat germs such as e-coli.
Mr.
Alborough advised of the purposes of the Food and Health and Safety Team, which
were linked to the Council’s purpose and themes and were developed through
systems thinking principles. The purposes were:
·
To ensure that food and
drink on sale for human consumption, which had been produced, stored, handled
or consumed in the Borough was without risk to the health and safety of the
consumer.
·
To enable good business.
The
Panel noted that the service worked to the Food Standards Agency Framework
Agreement and the Food Law Code of Practice, each of which described the role
of an enforcing authority and provided risk based proactive and reactive
intervention and business support.
Mr.
Alborough reported on the demand on the service, especially:
·
Inspecting and rating
businesses – during 2014/15, 372 existing businesses were formally inspected
and rated. Businesses were scored on a 0-5 Food Hygiene Rating, those with the
lower score received support and intervention from the authority to bring their
rating higher. It was noted that five businesses in the Borough rated one or
below at the end of 2014/15.
·
Supporting new business –
during 2014/15, 135 new business were supported prior to opening and inspected and
rated after opening.
·
Responding to statutory
notifications and having a reactive role with service requests – the service
received around 550 service requests per year. These requests included
complaints about food and food premises, food alerts/recalls and notifications
of infectious disease.
·
The role of Primary
Authority to the British Army – wherever the British Army consumed food it did
so in accordance with guidance agreed with Rushmoor Environmental Health
Services. A Primary Authority (PA) was a partnership between businesses and a
single local authority for environmental health with the following
characteristics:
o
The PA provided robust and
reliable advice which had to be respected by all local regulators.
o
A national inspection plan
could be produced to improve the effectiveness of inspections to avoid repeat
checks
o
The PA enabled better
information sharing
o
The PA had the authority to
co-ordinate enforcement to ensure a consistent and proportionate response to
issues
o
Businesses had the right to
decide on the level of support it received from its local PA
o
A PA could recover costs
Moving
forward, it was advised that the Food Safety Team would continue to support
their customers by further embedding systems thinking principles into their
work, by responding appropriately to emerging issues, by increasing regulatory
review and by keeping relevant to the changing times. It was also noted that
the teams would endeavour to recover more costs and increase income where
possible.
In
response to a query, Mr. Robinson advised that every primary food business in
the Borough would be subject to a Food Hygiene Rating. Inspections took place
on a rolling basis of 1-3 years depending on the risk level of the individual
business; most businesses were well into their second or third inspection
visit. It was noted that, if a business changed hands, an inspection would be
carried out after a suitable period of time to ensure standards had been
maintained; new business were contacted prior to opening with the offer of
advice and support.
The
Chairman thanked Mr. Alborough and Mr. Robinson for their presentation.