Decision details

Environmental Health’s food safety team carry out planned and unplanned inspections of all food business operators (FBOs) operating within the Borough and play a critical role in ensuring that food preparation areas and food sold for consumption within the borough is safe and compliant with the Food Standards Authority.

The Food Safety team regularly inspect food premises in Crawley. They also:
• Advise food premises on how to comply with the law
• Investigate complaints concerning unsafe food
• Respond to complaints from consumers about hygiene in food businesses
• Investigate allegations of food poisoning
• Carry out food sampling
• Remove unfit food offered for sale
• Close food premises that pose an imminent risk to health
• Provide free information, advice, and literature

The service currently only charges for rescore visits in which a business can nominate to be reinspected out of their inspection cycle to achieve a higher food hygiene rating. Uptake of these re-inspection is low and is due to the level of support and guidance being provided by officers without charge.

There is extensive support and guidance available to food businesses through the Food Standards Agency which includes step by step guidance on setting up a food business, running a food business, food hygiene ratings and a range of training available to FBOs.

Whilst we recognise that some businesses require higher levels of support to achieve a higher hygiene rating, the current process is causing inefficiencies and impacting on capacity within the service. The level of support and guidance being provided whilst positive, it is also impacting our ability to meet the target to inspect all new/transferring FBOs prior within the 28-day period between them registering and opening for business.

The 28-day target is set out by the FSA, but FBOs are able to begin trading before they are inspected and receive their score, but this should be avoided due to the potential risk to public health.

Under the FSA guidance, CBC Officers should inspect and rate the premises based upon what they find during their initial visit to a new FBO or a premises which has ‘changed hands’. Whilst it is usual for minor learning points to be provided, in a bid to support new FBOs, the service is providing a window of time for the FBO to make minor and in some cases, major improvements and offering a free revisit where the FBO receives their first score.

With the introduction of advisory visits and other chargeable services, the Food Safety team could generate a small amount of sustainable income which can then be used to fund wider Environmental Health activity and by introducing boundaries around the support we can offer, increase efficiency within the service which could be dedicated to providing additional things to customers and reduce wait times for inspections.

The introduction of the advisory visit service will provide businesses with a two-hour dedicated visit with qualified officers to provide early guidance and support to them which will enable the FBO to be fully compliant when they open, which also increases their chance of achieving a high food hygiene rating.

Upon further inspection of fees and charges, we found some additional opportunities for the service to generate income through the services it delivers which are all optional for our customers to access and have varying levels of uptake across Sussex, with Crawley being one of very few that does not charge for these services.

To introduce and charge for a food safety advisory visit service.  The Cabinet Member for Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change was consulted on this matter.