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premises dealing with full meals, to be efficient and avoid nuisance to other premises, a satisfactorily
planned engineering scheme is essential. High initial costs with heavy maintenance and not
inconsiderable running charges, and no obvious financial advantage, leads to devious experiments
to avoid a capital outlay—the multiple caterers being rarely excepted. Frequently results are
short-lived and may lead, if not checked, to deplorable overheated working conditions in the kitchens,
with the staff only too anxious to escape after each spell of cooking, no matter what necessary
cleaning is left undone. There is also a tendency for caterers to shut down mechanical ventilation
should neighbours complain of smells, or if it is causing noise or vibration. Apart from the surveillance
of ventilation in the interests of food hygiene and the health of staff, the investigation of these
external complaints associated with ventilation takes much of the inspectors' time.
Thus cleaning is not merely a matter of providing a constant supply of hot water and soap, but
also necessitates adequate staffing, suitable work space, and efficient ventilation. Naturally it
follows that cleanliness is more efficient in subsidised premises, such as industrial caterers, where
financial return is a secondary consideration and where there is adequate working space and
ventilation to make conditions congenial to staff.
Cooking Smells
Cooking smells, a subject which was dealt with at some length in the last Report, gave rise to 68
complaints during 1966. Every effort is usually made by those responsible to overcome this kind
of nuisance being caused to others in nearby office or residential accommodation but the provision
of a satisfactory solution can be expensive.
Noise arising from Food Premises
Twenty-two complaints of noise from various sources originating in connection with food premises
were received during the year. Noise or vibration which would amount to a nuisance at common
law becomes a Statutory Nuisance.
Local authorities are able to require abatement by service of an abatement notice on the person
causing the nuisance, on the owner or occupier of the premises on which it arises, and if the notice
is not complied with it can be enforced by proceedings in a Magistrates Court. Fortunately, in
no case was it necessary to resort to legal proceedings.
Unprotected Food
This is a problem which is constantly confronting Inspectors in the course of their visits.
Customers, particularly in licensed premises, are known to regard food protection by screening at the
counter as a barrier to the camaraderie that exists between service staff and regular customers.
Open display is a widespread practice and one to be deprecated, but it is a fact that the public, even
if aware of the dangers, for the most part remain apathetic. The minimum requirement should be
sloped glass screens—known as 'sneeze plates'—which protect the food from possible contamination
from customers' clothing, and from droplet contamination. The Food Hygiene Regulations
only require that food shall not be placed so as to involve risk of contamination in the context of
protecting the public health, and it is sometimes difficult to impress on those concerned that exposed
food is a risk to health, and practically impossible to demonstrate. It is sometimes more fruitful to
approach the problem on aesthetic grounds.
Another aspect of the protection of food which receives constant attention concerns bread and
flour confectionery left on doorsteps of food establishments without adequate protection. The
appropriate clause of the Food Hygiene (General) Regulations 1960 dealing with this contravention
is contained in Section 8. This requires, inter alia, every food handler to take all reasonable steps to
protect food from risk of contamination, not to place it where it would be exposed to such risk, and,
in any forecourt or yard, not to place it lower than eighteen inches from the ground unless adequately
protected.
Responsibility under these Regulations for any offence of this nature therefore falls on the person
undertaking the delivery and not on the bakery company, as his employer, or on the shopkeeper
or restaurateur, as the purchaser. This has meant that before the Inspector could produce evidence
likely to satisfy the Courts he had to witness the depositing of the food, and this, in view of the
uncertain times, including both early morning and late evening, when deliveries are made, has
entailed observation being maintained over a long period.
Cases where the Department has found foodstuffs to have been left outside premises but where
the delivery has not been witnessed have deen dealt with by way of caution, in the absence of
sufficient evidence to undertake formal action.
The coming into effect of the Food Hygiene (Markets, Stalls and Delivery Vehicles) Regulations
1966 as from the 1 st January, 1967, will strengthen the Council's powers to combat such practices,
as the proprietor of any food business who permits land, which includes any open space surrounding
or adjoining any premises, to be used for the storage of any food in such a manner as to expose the
food to risk of contamination, will henceforth be guilty of an offence.