Food law enforcement plan
Registration of food premises
The Authority is responsible for the statutory registration of food premises under EC Regulation 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs. These Regulations, which came into force on 1st January 2006, extended the registration requirement to include all primary producers. This brought primary producers into the local authority food hygiene inspection programme.
Responsibility for enforcement at the primary production level is split between the Food Safety and Standards and Animal Health and Welfare Team, with the Animal Health and Welfare Team responsible for all livestock farms and those producing crops for animal feed.
While the Food Safety and Standards Team aims to inspect new food premises and those subject to a change in ownership within 28 days of the commencement of operations, resources are prioritised towards those that are high risk for food hygiene and/or standards.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was recognised that local authorities could not achieve this in all cases, due to a number of reasons such as premises not being allowed to open, and at different times, inspections being suspended. It was therefore expected that where new registrations were received, Local authorities should prioritise inspections of applications for approval under 853/2004, i.e. premises who deal in products of animal origin and supply other businesses, and also prioritise (at times when inspections were not suspended and premises were open) newly registering businesses which would be likely to be high risk, or where information suggested that the premises may pose a risk. For that reason, in this year’s plan, data is not provided on the number of premises inspected within the normal 28 days.
However 251 new registrations were received in 2021-22, and after risk assessing, 107 were inspected during the year. A list of 96 high risk unrated premises was carried forward into the year 2022-23 as a priority for inspection alongside the other priorities stated in the FSA’s LA Recovery Plan. This compares to 276 new registrations received on 2020-21 and 254 in 2019-20.
In total as of 1 April 2022, there were 482 unrated registered premises on the database. Following initial inspection, food premises are added to the planned inspection programme.