UK’s Flintshire County to okay 2020-21 Food Service Plan to ensure food safety

U.K – Flintshire County Council of the United Kingdom, is looking to approve the new Food Service Plan that sets out the aims and objectives for the service for this financial year and how these are to be achieved, to ensure the quality of food hygiene is maintained.

The plan covers food safety, and the enforcement of food safety. It further looks at food hygiene legislation in all food establishments in the county, food standards entailing checking establishments and dealing with complaints and animal feed including visits to feed premises, providing information and dealing with complaints.

The pressures brought about on the service by the global pandemic has resulted in a delay of the 2021-22 plan.

Flintshire Council’s cabinet member for planning and public protection, Councillor Chris Bithell, noted that by approving this year’s Food Service Plan, the Cabinet will ensure that the high-level food safety and hygiene already established within the county will continue.

“Our Food Safety and Standards team works extremely hard to ensure that the residents of Flintshire can have confidence in a high level of hygiene when it comes to food. I must add that the team has had some impressive achievements over the past year. On behalf of the Cabinet, congratulations to you all on a job well done, especially during such a challenging time,” he said.

In 2020-2021, the commitment shown by all officers across the service was excellent at such a challenging, fast-evolving time and they played a significant role in helping to track down people who had been in contact with those who had tested positive for Covid-19, thus helping to reduce the spread of the virus.

Food officers were able to provide advice to businesses affected by the Covid regulations to protect public health and consumer protection, in addition to assisting local food businesses to continue to trade.

In addition, feed qualified and competent officers moved over to providing advice and enforcement duties on the Covid regulations while maintaining a reduced level of feed work for inspections and advice to businesses

Further, officers had to move from Covid response to food work and back again, if needed, at very short notice to pick up product specific regulatory work or significant food hygiene issues.

Flintshire Council’s Cabinet committee is scheduled to approve the Food Service Plan 2021-2022 when it meets on Tuesday, January 18, according to The Leader.