Food Safety Performance and Service Priorities

Food Safety Performance 2010/11 and Current Service Priorities

Performance over 2010/11

SandwichThe Council is the food enforcement authority for over almost 1000 food businesses. Each food business is assessed on the basis of the risk it poses and allocated an inspection at an appropriate interval ranging from six months to five years.

 

During 2010/11 we completed our entire inspection programme. A total of 484 food inspections were undertaken plus a further 104 of our lowest risk food businesses were contacted via questionnaire to establish the current nature of their food operation. A further 198 re-visit inspections were undertaken to ensure that works required by food safety inspectors had been completed. A further 124 advisory, complaint and sampling visits were made to food businesses over the course of the year.

 

The food service investigated 154 complaints and service requests. These ranged from complaints about unsatisfactory food/food premises to dealing with local and national food alerts. The food service also dealt with 182 statutory reported infectious diseases that were considered potentially food related illness. This was an increase in the number of notifications compared to the previous year.

 

The service completed its food sampling programme, taking 150 food and environmental samples. Of these samples 9 were classified as borderline and 40 were classed as poor quality results. The remaining samples were either satisfactory or classified as good quality. Guidance was given to food proprietors in regard to these unsatisfactory samples and re-samples were taken to ensure that results had improved.

 

Further details on food sampling are provided on our Food Sampling webpage.

 

We continue to provide support to food businesses. More information and resources were made available to businesses via the Council’s website. Our food hygiene training programme was expanded and 90 food handlers were awarded food hygiene qualifications.

 

Further details on hygiene training are provided on our Food Hygiene Training webpage.

 

Scores on the DoorsLooking beyond the routine work, the Scores on the Doors scheme has now been operating since October 2007. This scheme involves publishing, via the Council’s website, the risk ratings given by food officers following their food safety inspections. You can now see the hygiene results for over 800 premises on the Council’s website.

 

As a result of publishing the food safety inspection ratings, we have seen the percentage of excellent (5 star) premises increase from 3.3% to 32%. Having virtually a third of our food businesses on a 5 stars is a truly excellent result. Even more importantly, we have seen the number of very poor (zero star) premises decrease from 6.3% to under 0.6%. The five premises currently falling into the very poor category are the subject of focused enforcement activity. These figures indicate that food produced within the Borough is safer since we introduced Scores on the Doors and that public health is better protected as a direct result of the work undertaken by the Council.

 

Further details on Scores on the Doors are provided on our Scores on the Doors webpage.

 

A further indicator of the success of Scores on the Doors is the interest and support it has received from the public. Almost 70,000 enquiries have been made on the website since the launch. The other good news is that the Food Standards Agency ( FSA ) has decided to adopt a five star scheme like ours as the national standard.

 

You can find more information on our Scores on the Doors webpage.

Service objectives for 2011/12

Our main objectives are as follows: 

  • To carry out food safety inspections. The programme being to make contact with 510 food businesses 388 of which will be actual inspections. We will continue to target our attention on those businesses posing the greatest risk to food safety. Our objective will be to further decrease the number of premises falling into the lower Scores on the Doors categories.
  • To undertake food complaint investigations.
  • To continue operating the Scores on the Doors website and increase our level of publicity for the scheme.
  • To continue promoting Safer Food Better Business ( SFBB ) resources.
  • To continue supporting food businesses. To develop in particular services that assist new and prospective food business proprietors.
  • To continue providing Food Hygiene Training for businesses.
  • To maintain and further develop the food pages on the Council’s website.
  • To undertake a programme of Food Sampling.
  • To investigate notifications of food related Infectious Diseases.
  • To respond to food safety incidents and respond to Food Hazard Alerts.
  • To support other public sector organisations involved in food safety work across the county and nationally.

Contact Us

If you wish to know more information please contact the Food Team:

 

Email: envhealth@ashford.gov.uk.

Telephone: 01233 330581

Fax: 01233 330469

Post: Environmental Services, Civic Centre, Tannery Lane, Ashford  TN23 1PL

This webpage was updated on 8/23/2011

 

Ashford Borough Council, Civic Centre
Tannery Lane, Ashford TN23 1PL
Telephone: 01233 331111
Email: customer.care@ashford.gov.uk or view our contact us page.
Ashford Borough Council Ashford, Best Placed in Britain

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