If you are starting a new food business you must register with the local authority at least 28 days before setting up.  This means that most food business premises will have to be registered.  If you think you are exempt from being registered, for instance where you may already be registered for food law purposes or perhaps a tent or marquee, but not including stalls, then you should contact the local authority to make sure.

If you make or serve food then the absolute bare minimum that you need is a Level 2 Food Hygiene Certificate.  The necessary skills may also be obtained in other ways, such as through on-the-job training, self-study or relevant prior experience. The operator of the food business is responsible for ensuring this happens.

This course is 100% online and can takes 2-3 hours on any PC with an internet connection. Technically it is not an actual qualification; but you need to be able to prove that you meet the legal requirements for food handlers, and many people do this by getting a UK level 2 food hygiene certificate.

The modules covered are:

• costs of poor hygiene
• food poisoning and food-borne diseases
• how germs grow in food
• contamination of food
• prevention of food poisoning
• improving personal hygiene
• storage and temperature control
• preparation, cooking and cooling of food
• construction and design of food premises
• cleaning and disinfecting
• pest control
• food hygiene law requirements
• control of food safety risks
• hazard analysis

The Environmental Health Service will only deal with food complaints that pose a public health threat. Environmental Health officers pursue a positive and proactive approach towards ensuring compliance through their enforcement policy, which in general terms is as follows:

• helping and encouraging regulated entities to understand and meet regulatory requirements more easil
• responding proportionately to regulatory breaches
• protecting and improving public health and the environment

Sanctions and penalties will be consistent, balanced, fairly implemented and relate to common standards that ensure individual, public safety or the environment is adequately protected.

The aim of sanctions and penalties are to:

• change the behaviour of the offender
• eliminate any financial gain or benefit from non-compliance
• be responsive and consider what is appropriate for the particular offender and regulatory issue, which can include punishment and the public stigma that should be associated with a criminal conviction proportionate to the nature of the offence and the harm caused
• aim to deter future non-compliance

This is just some information for your reference, but please bear in mind this is not a complete statement of the law.

Image: David Sillitoe

To help businesses comply with food hygiene regulations, the Food Standards Agency is launching a nationwide campaign today, designed to raise awareness of the tools available to help food businesses stay on the right side of the law. Specifically designed to help businesses that supply food directly to consumers (takeaways, restaurants and cafes, for example) the campaign will run from today until the 1st of March.

Included in the campaign will be various tools, spread across the UK, all providing advice on effective food management techniques. These tools include England’s Safer Food, Better Business, Scotland’s RetailSafe, Wales’ CookSafe and Northern Ireland’s Safe Catering, along with radio adverts, online promotion and campaign posters. In fact, food hygiene campaign posters can be downloaded from the links on this page.

The Food Standards Agency’s Head of Enforcement, Sarah Appleby, said of the campaign that it is “to help to support the important work that local authorities do to ensure that food businesses comply with food law. It is also to give businesses the opportunity to achieve higher ratings for the rollout in 2010 of the national “scores on the doors” scheme for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Food Hygiene Information Scheme in Scotland”.

As anyone who has been following this blog will know, food safety regulations don’t just apply to those people to whom working with food is a fundamental part of their profession; the latest food hygiene legislations cover just about anybody whose job could bring them into contact with food at any time.

Last week, the FSA launched a new guide in their Safer Food, Better Business range; an information pack designed to help childminders comply with the latest food hygiene legislations.  Although it may seem obvious that childminders have a role involving knowledge of food safety, it is not immediately apparent that they are obliged to comply with EU Food Hygiene Legislation.   Specifically designed around the role of the childminder, this guide makes their legislated responsibilities easy and quick to handle, with a minimum of paperwork.  Amongst other things, it includes advice on food allergies, feeding babies and the cleaning, cooking and chilling involved in food preparation.  Like other Safer Food, Better Business packs, the childminder’s pack utilises a system known as reporting by exception; by only writing down problems, or things that go wrong, there is a minimum of extra work involved, yet a simple way of conducting reviews to identify persistent food safety problems!

Safer Food, Better Business is the Food Standards Agency’s approach to ensuring that small businesses fully understand their responsibilities under the EU Food Hygiene Legislation.  In the form of a series of packs and guides, the Safer Food, Better Business approach has been designed to help these small businesses create and manage food safety systems to ensure they are complying with the relevant food hygiene requirements.  Due to the fact that any business involved with food has to comply with the legislation, the packs are specifically designed around a variety of different food businesses, like caterers and restaurants, as well as professions in which food service is a secondary role – childminders and care home employees, for example.

The accompanying DVD, ‘Working with Food?  What you Need to Know before You Start’, helps food businesses provide food safety training to their staff and is available in sixteen different languages – making it as accessible as possible to the majority of the population.  To this extent, there is no excuse for businesses, no matter how small, not to attempt to ensure they are complying with food hygiene legislation.