Half of restaurants break hygiene rules
More than half of restaurants and caterers inspected by local authorities in the UK during 1999 were found to be breaking health and hygiene rules, say new figures out today.
The statistics, released by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), show that out of 234,243 establishments inspected, 122,957 had broken the rules.
But only a small proportion (542) were prosecuted. Most of these (365) were for general hygiene breaches. The others were sent warnings or improvement notices.
The total number of restaurants and other caterers was 381,649, out of a total of 612,203 food premises.
The number of establishments recorded by local authorities rose by 17%, which the FSA believes was due to national publicity surrounding the admission by Westminster City Council in London that 3,000 restaurant and other food outlets were missing from its database.
The FSA is meeting tomorrow to discuss the report. It is expected to recommend a tough new approach to police local authorities' inspection records and publish their results on its Web site.
by David Shrimpton david.shrimpton@rbi.co.uk
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