More than 50,000 food businesses have yet to receive a single food hygiene inspection, including one in four farming or growing businesses, and one in six distribution firms.
FSA data shows there are 613,310 registered food businesses in the UK, of which 8.6% are listed as awaiting inspection. The figures don’t include businesses that have been inspected and received a rating, but may be overdue a reinspection by local authority food inspectors.
In absolute terms, caterers topped the table with 11,424 premises unchecked, followed by 10,166 restaurants and cafés and 9,942 smaller retailers.
Supermarkets were most likely to have had at least one inspection, with 2.4% of businesses (383) waiting for their first.
The problem of inspection backlogs was discussed at the FSA business committee in June. Minutes published on Monday flagged local authority resourcing as a “significant corporate and delivery risk” for the FSA.
“Local authorities continued to face significant difficulties recruiting and retaining suitably qualified food safety officers. While additional resources had been made available, vacancies remained high and there was a substantial gap between funded posts and the number of officers in place. As a result, local authorities were often unable to increase inspection activity at the pace required to eliminate backlogs,” the committee noted.
Analysis by Virtual College also showed that smaller retailers were more than twice as likely to fail food hygiene inspections, with 5.6% achieving a score of 0, 1 or 2 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland or improvement required in Scotland, compared with 2.2% of supermarkets.
Jamie Ashforth, business and strategy director at Virtual College, said: “Our data shows takeaway and sandwich shops consistently underperform other premises types, so operators in this category should focus disproportionate attention on food handling and storage practices. High staff turnover in hospitality also means hygiene training can’t be a one-off induction exercise – refresher training should be built into every shift pattern change.”
Yesterday the FSA confirmed it would progress plans for a major overhaul of regulation, with a move to national oversight of the largest food retailers that will see supermarkets’ food hygiene regulated centrally and including the business’ own audits.
It said a trial with retailers “had demonstrated that national level scrutiny of their data could be used to identify food safety issues and risks at a systemic level, alongside checks on the ground”.
It is also considering making it compulsory to display food hygiene scores and boosting the enforcement powers of local food teams.
Plans will be further developed ahead of a public consultation next year.
FSA chair Susan Jebb said: “The system that protects our food has served us well for many years, maintaining some of the highest food standards in the world. But the way people buy, sell and produce food has changed enormously, and we need to keep pace with that change so that we can be confident of continuing to keep food safe into the future.
“As a board, we’re confident that our proposals can strengthen food safety as a whole, improving the local system of regulation for the vast majority of businesses, and complementing that with national scrutiny for a handful of very large businesses in order to strengthen public protection in the future. This is in line with the government’s ambitions for growth and for decision-making at a local level by default.”
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