Minutes:
Stephanie Waterford, Service Manager - Licensing, Food & Safety Regulation, delivered a presentation to the Committee and gave an overview of the work areas under her purview. The presentation was delivered in three parts: Environmental Health, Trading Standards Service and the Licensing Service.
Under Environmental Health, Members were initially informed of the Food Health Safety Team’s broad range of public protection responsibilities. It was noted that the team’s public health and disease control duties had been an integral part of the Council’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic whilst continuing to conduct around 1,600 food hygiene inspections per annum amongst other responsibilities. A number of recent successes were highlighted including an ongoing gas safety compliance project whereby the team would be checking the safety of gas installations within approximately 1,000 commercial kitchens; this project was introduced following a commercial kitchen gas explosion in the neighbouring borough of Ealing.
With regard to the Imported Food Service, which was based at Heathrow Airport and also came under the Council’s Environmental Health service, the Committee were informed that the team manage the consignments of approximately 12,000 per annum to ensure that certain foods entering the UK food chain were safe. Roles within the Imported Food Service included Environmental Health Officers, Official Veterinarians and Food Safety Technical Specialists. It was highlighted that there had been a sizable increase in workload regarding imports that had travelled through the European Union since Brexit.
An overview of the Trading Standards Service was given highlighting their responsibilities for enforcing legislation to uphold product standards and safety, this included:
The Committee were informed of some recent successes relating to the Trading Standards team including the seizure of 60,000 counterfeit cigarettes and 20kg of counterfeit rolling tobacco hidden in boxes labelled as children’s toys and other paraphernalia.
In relation to the Council’s Licensing Service, an overview was given with regard to the service’s responsibility for licensing a variety of activities across hospitality, entertainment, retail, close contact and animal businesses. A recent success was highlighted whereby a two and a half year legal battle to bring criminal charges to two individuals for the unlicensed breeding and sale of dogs and cats from a house in West Drayton had resulted in fines in excess of £340k, £280k of which came to the Council to cover expenses.
It was highlighted that the Covid-19 pandemic had impacted this work area significantly, the Licensing Service and the Food Health and Safety Team had been leading the enforcement and compliance operation to ensure that business were operating in accordance with all Coronavirus and lockdown restrictions. Further to this, since lockdown restriction had started to ease in April 2021, the Council had offered a range of support to businesses to reopen and was working on a programme of events in town centres in an effort to welcome residents back to the High Street.
The Committee were impressed with the way in which these services were able to refocus their work during the pandemic and thanked officers for their hard work. It was noted that Ward Councillors had heard about some of the successes mentioned in the presentation through local news outlets and queried whether local Councillors could be notified of operations before they had concluded; officers noted that the specific case mentioned, regarding the unlicensed sale of dogs and cats in West Drayton, was a criminal case and therefore for legal reasons, the information could not be shared by the Council until the case had concluded. Further to this it was noted by the Committee that, often situations were leaked to the press by members of the public before the Council could legally disclose the information.
Officers confirmed that Health and Safety enforcement was split between local authorities and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Local authorities primarily enforced Health and Safety standards in business settings, it was also noted that the HSE would enforce standards in schools and Council owned buildings and settings.
RESOLVED: That the Committee noted the officer’s verbal report.