Food Hygiene inspections
Case reference FOI2022/00284
Published 6 April 2022
Request
I would be most grateful if you could answer the following questions as a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Q1. What is your Council's policy for inspecting premises that serve food to the public such as bars, restaurants , hotels and takeaways in your area. Ie: How often do you aim to visit such premises to inspect food hygiene standards?
Q2. For each calendar year for the past 3 years from Jan 2017 to present, please supply the following information in relation to Food Hygiene inspections:
Q2a. How many such premises were/are licensed by your Council to serve food and were/are subject to food hygiene inspections by your Council.
Q2b. How many complaints did you receive from members of the public about licenced premises suspected of poor hygiene or causing food poisoning or the like?
Q2c. How many routine food hygiene inspections did your authority carry out?
Q2d. How many inspections were overdue compared to your policy in question 1?
Q3. As it stands today, 14th March 2022, for premises that are currently trading and were identified in Q1 (that are subject to food hygiene inspections in your Council's area) how many have not been inspected for: Q3a. Over one year; Q3b. Over two years; Q3c. Over five years; Q3d. Over ten years. Q3e. Have never been inspected.
Q3f. For each of the five hygiene ratings awarded to premises (1 -5) how many premises were awarded each rating upon their last inspection?
Response
Q1. Our food hygiene intervention frequencies are set by the Food Standards Agency. The food standards agency's code of practice contains the details of how we risk rate & how frequently we inspect premises and can be found at the following link:
https://www.food.gov.uk/about-us/food-and-feed-codes-of-practice#food-law-code-of-practice
Due to the Covid pandemic the Food Standards Agency have issued a recovery plan, which has temporarily changed the timescales expected for our interventions.
Q2a. The Service Area have advised that we do not licence food premises, however we register food premises. The number of premises we had registered circa 01 April of each year can be found below:
2017 - 2,454
2018 - 2,397
2019 - 2,437
2020 - 2,371
2021 - 2,485
2022 - 2,473 (March 2022 figure)
Q2b.
2017 - 210
2018 - 232
2019 - 254
2020 - 184
2021 - 161
Q2c. Number of routine risk rated interventions undertaken:
2017 - 785
2018 - 763
2019 - 792
2020 - 306
2021 - 418
2022 - 154 (up to 14.3.22)
Q2d. Number of routine interventions outstanding on 01 April in the following years:
2018 - 404
2019 - 480
2020 - 399
2021 - 919
2022 - 1133 (as of 18.03.22)
Q3. The Service Area have advised that the following figures were calculated as of 18 March 2022, they can only be done for the day they were created & cannot be back-dated. The figures are based on the FSA's code of practice scheduled intervention dates, not the current FSA recovery plan. The figures are accumulative, i.e. if they are more than five years overdue, they are included in the one, two and five year totals.
Q3a. Over one year - Intervention: All with a scheduled date up to 18.3.2021 - Total: 660
Q3b. Over two years - Intervention: All with a scheduled date up to 18.3.2020 - Total: 236
Q3c. Over five years - Intervention: All with a scheduled date up to 18.3.2017 - Total: 99
Q3d. Over ten years - Intervention: All with a scheduled date up to 18.3.2012 - Total: 0
Q3e. Have never been inspected - Intervention: All unrated premises - Total: 209
Q3f.
Food hygiene rating 1 - 11
Food hygiene rating 2 - 28
Food hygiene rating 3 - 112
Food hygiene rating 4 - 239
Food hygiene rating 5 - 942
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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