Issue - meetings

Food Service Plan 2018/19

Meeting: 14/11/2018 - Housing, Neighbourhoods and Leisure Committee (Item 11)

11 Food Service Plan 2018/19 pdf icon PDF 55 KB

This report provides the Committee with an opportunity to review the Council’s Food Service Plan 2018/19.  The plan sets out how the Council undertakes its statutory duties to deliver safe food for Reading’s residents.  The report also sets out progress against an action plan agreed with the Food Standards Agency following their audit.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Director of Environment and Neighbourhood Services submitted a report that provided the Committee with an opportunity to review the Council’s Food Service Plan 2018/19.  The plan set out how the Council undertook the statutory duties to delivery safe food for Reading’s residents.  The report also set out progress against an action plan agreed with the Food Standards Agency following their audit.

 

As part of the Framework Agreement, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) carried out an audit of the Council’s Food and Safety team in November 2017.  As part of the audit, the Council was required to produce an action plan to address areas where improvements could be made.  The action plan was an appendix to the Food Service Plan.  The Food Service Plan was appended to the report.  The report stated that one of the recommendations published on the FSA’s website arising from their report was that the Food Service Plan should be submitted to the Committee and published on the Council’s website.

 

The Food Service Plan operated on an annual review.  This was due to the significant in year variations associated with the churn of food businesses which meant that the risk based inspection program cannot be forecast accurately more than a year in advance.  Trends indicated that there was an increasing demand on the Food and Safety Team resulting from: consumer complaints; requests from businesses for advice; and increased food poisoning notifications.  Despite this increasing demand and staff shortages in 2017/18 the team delivered 100% of Category A-E food hygiene inspections (916 inspections).  The team had also been able to deliver an inspection rate of 89% of all unrated premises (177 inspections) and 100% of those premises failing outside the standard rating scheme (126 inspections).

 

Resolved -   

 

(1)      That the content of the Food Service Plan and action plan following the FSA Audit be agreed;

 

(2)      That the Food Service Plan be reviewed and agreed on an annual basis prior to the start of the subsequent financial year and published on the Council’s website.