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- 51 -
FOOD HYGIENE
Food shops and catering establishments continue to absorb a great
deal of the time of the two women Public Health Inspectors, by reason of
the need for added supervision due to staff shortages in the kitchens of
food restaurants and coffee bars etc. With few exceptions most caterers
seriously endeavour to maintain a high standard of hygiene and cleanliness
in respect of both staff and premises, and over the year very few complaints
have been received. Nevertheless, the Inspectors must of necessity spend
a large amount of time talking to staff on points of personal hygiene and
food handling, as there is a constant changing of staff particularly
kitchen hands, porters and persons engaged on washing crockery and utensils.
By and large the effort is rewarding for the response is good and very
little resentment has been shown by employees and even less by employers.
There is very often a language difficulty, chiefly in regard to Oriental
type restaurants, but usually in the absence of the proprietor at least
one person can be found with sufficient knowledge of English to interpret
the Inspector's instructions.
Considerable improvements have been carried out to many existing
establishments both as regards structure and equipment, and a continuous
effort is being made to obtain higher standards, a fairly simple matter
with new or newly adapted premises, but at times difficult in existing
establishments where space is limited. Again emphasis is placed on the
co-operation of the majority of owners.
The complaint always to the fore in catering premises, and one that
I am afraid will always be with us in Chelsea, is that of escaping cooking
odours. A great deal of time is spent endeavouring to improve systems of
ventilation. The most frequent cause of trouble is due to the position of
flue discharge. The closely built up area of Chelsea with its different
building heights makes this a difficult problem, further aggravated by
the lack of local authority powers. These odours may not constitute a
public health nuisance, although they may be of great annoyance to occupiers
of neighbouring premises. In many cases they are certainly an amenity
nuisance but there is no official action the Inspector can take; a fact
that the complainant frequently has difficulty in understanding. A large
amount of time was spent dealing with this particular form of complaint and
with the co-operation of all concerned considerable improvement was achieved.
Prepacking and wrapping of food for display for sale is gaining in
popularity and although this reduces the amount of supervision required at
sales counter level, increased attention has to be paid to inspecting those
parts of the premises where subdividing and packing of food takes place.
Much progress has again been made with modernisation of Public Houses
including the provision of better catering equipment, installation of modern
and often additional sanitary arrangements, together with abolition of some
of the very unsatisfactory outdoor urinals. In all cases the brewers have
been most co-operative.