Food Hygiene and Safety
The Food, Health and Safety Enforcement team covers a range of food hygiene, health and safety and infectious disease control work – and we do a lot more than just enforce the law.
We have a team of seven officers, consisting of Environmental Health Officers and Technical Officers. All staff are highly trained and experienced, and we carry out an extensive training programme in order to ensure that we remain legally competent to inspect businesses and carry out the rest of our work.
Most of our work involves inspecting local businesses, giving them advice on how they can comply with the law. This helps to ensure the safety of any food produced and sold in Torfaen, and to ensure that anyone working in Torfaen is protected from being injured or made ill by their workplace. As well as advising businesses, we can take stronger measures such as serving notices requiring work to be done, and we can prosecute where businesses or others are seriously breaching the law or just don't care.
How the Team Works
The way that we deliver services is largely laid down by the law and by government, and we have a range of codes of practice and other guidance that we are obliged to comply with. This means that we can make sure we are delivering to the correct standard, but the downside is that sometimes we can not meet local needs or deliver specific services.
We are required to specify how we carry out our enforcement function. We generally take a gradual approach starting with help and advice, and only prosecuting in the most serious cases or where there are continuing breaches of the law that the businesses has not bothered to resolve.
More information on how we enforce the law can be found on the Enforcing the Law| page
Performance Monitoring
We report on our performance and are audited to make sure that we meet the necessary standards, and some of the results are accessible to the public. If you are interested in seeing how we are doing, the following websites contain information
General performance monitoring
Food enforcement