Food Service Plan

All local councils now have to produce an annual Food Safety Service Plan, which outlines what we are doing to ensure food safety.

This Service Plan has been produced in response to the Food Standard Agency's framework agreement on food law enforcement. It tells you how we will protect and promote food safety throughout Torfaen by a combination of measures, which include enforcing food safety law, sampling of foods and liaising with other organisations. It also outlines the priorities, targets, resources and performance on food safety, and shows how this ties in with the other work carried out by the teams delivering this work.

The plan should help in service management, performance planning as well as assisting in comparing performance against other local authorities.

Each year we inspect a percentage of the food premises (in accordance with a national risk based inspection plan) in the area to make sure they are run hygienically and selling food which is safe to eat.

The Food Standards Agency's Food Law Code of Practice allows a number of different interventions to be used instead of inspections. This allows a risk based approach to be taken. Most of the food businesses in Torfaen already meet high standards of food safety, and we put a lot of effort into ensuring these standards are maintained and have a firm, but fair approach.

We believe our approach works, as we rarely need to take legal action against food outlets and have very few cases of confirmed food poisonings originating from local business.

A copy of the Torfaen Food Service Plan can be downloaded here.

If you would like any further information or to comment on this plan, you can e-mail us on commercial.services@torfaen.gov.uk