Government applauds Westminster council's

Westminster City Council's efforts to beef up its food inspection service - after the embarrassing revelation in 1998 that it had "lost" some 3,000 food premises from its database - have won it praise from the Government.

Westminster, which has the country's highest density of restaurants, last year saw the number of food premises to be inspected increase by 15% to 4,558, including 3,721 restaurants and caterers, 835 food shops and two manufacturers.

Hiring more inspectors and creating a quality assurance team to monitor them helped eliminate the inspection backlog. The Department of Health recently confirmed that the council had completed the six-monthly inspection of high-risk, category A premises six days ahead of the 30 September deadline.

The in-house team must inspect 222 category A premises every six months and 946 category B premises every 12 months. The council believes it is on track to beat the looming April deadline for both classes.

The Government also praised both the council's quality assurance team and its contracted-out arrangements for inspecting medium- to low-risk premises which unions feared might compromise public safety (Caterer, 11 November 1999, page 6).

Outside contractors handle inspections for 3,390 medium- to low-risk premises, where mandatory inspections range from every 18 months for 2,441 premises, to every five years for 148 outlets.

by Angela Frewin