Delays in food hygiene inspections a “serious public health issue”

A BBC investigation has revealed that delays in food hygiene inspections are putting consumers at increased risk of food poisoning.

The analysis found that one in five restaurants and takeaways had not been seen by a food inspector for more than two years.

The environmental health team says the trend is due to a hiring crisis and delays caused by the pandemic.

Civil servant trade union Unison said it was a “serious public health issue”.

“Inspections are currently so slow that food businesses with poor hygiene practices are able to operate with little fear of being caught,” a spokesman said.

The BBC’s findings come amid growing concerns about food safety following an outbreak of E. coli infections linked to tainted products in June.

Hospitality UK, the food and drink industry representative, announced that three-quarters of eateries received the highest hygiene rating score in the latest inspections.

“Despite the pressures the industry has faced in recent years, customer safety remains non-negotiable,” the spokesman said.

Classic car blogger Steph Holloway said long intervals between inspections could lead to facilities considered low-risk to relax standards.

A 36-year-old man from Huddersfield fell ill with suspected food poisoning after eating out at a curry house in May 2023.

Although the hotel had a five-star rating for hygiene, she said it was immediately clear things had changed since it was last inspected more than two years ago.

“When we walked in we thought, ‘This place isn’t very clean,'” Steph said. “And we were like, ‘Oh, let’s eat, it’s OK,’ but it wasn’t OK.”

Steph and her boyfriend noticed that the trays used to serve the poppadums were very dirty.

“It was full of rubbish,” she said, “like it had been in someone’s cupboard for 10 years.”

Steph also noticed dark stains on the door handles and that a mop bucket had been used to hold the fire door open.

Within hours, she and her boyfriend fell ill and Steph was confined to bed for the next two days.

The couple filed a complaint about the restaurant, but the building wasn’t reinspected until September of that year.

It received a zero score, the worst possible score for a grocery store.

Inspectors found moldy fruit in fridges, poor cleaning and fruit flies around the kitchen. It was inspected again in April this year and has now been given a three-star rating.

“We’re being very careful about where we go,” Steph said.

Cockroaches, rat droppings, moldy food — the life of a health inspector may not seem all that glamorous.

But the agency that oversees food safety wants to reverse a hiring crisis that could expose customers to serious illness.

Nicola Carrington, 24, is in the age group that local councils across the country are trying to recruit.

She works in Salford City Council’s Environmental Health team and loves her job.

“I’ve been in some really awful stores,” she said. “I’ve been in stores that had cockroach infestations. I think they know they have a problem, but what do they do about it?”

Nicola studied Chemistry, Biology and Physics at university before going on to do a degree in Environmental Health at Liverpool John Moores University – becoming an inspector was something she had always wanted to do.

“Most people are surprised when I come in,” she says. “They say, ‘You look a little young.'”

“People don’t know how to get started. You don’t hear anyone talking about it at colleges.”

But Nicola says it can be really interesting and rewarding work.

“Every day is different and every food business owner is different. You meet so many different people, you never know what’s going to happen.”

The guidelines say most food premises in England, Wales and Northern Ireland should be inspected every six months to two years, depending on the level of risk.

For businesses with extremely low risk, such as pharmacists and greengrocers, it is possible to undergo inspection within three years.

The team, employed by the city council, will assess premises on aspects such as cleanliness, pest control and safe food storage, giving them a score between zero (the worst) and five (the best).

They also have the power to close businesses in extreme circumstances.

A BBC analysis of more than 250,000 public records on the Food Standards Agency’s website found that more than 53,000 tests had not been carried out since 2021.

In Scotland, which has a pass/fail food hygiene system, around 40% of businesses were last assessed more than two years ago.

Emily Miles, chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, which oversees food hygiene inspections in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said local authorities were broadly clearing the backlog of high-risk tests that built up during the coronavirus lockdown.

But she said officials are concerned that lower-risk and newer venues are not being tested.

She said long-term cuts to the council’s food safety budget and a 15 percent drop in health inspection staff over the past decade meant council was struggling to assess businesses in time.

As of April 2021, there were 77,000 businesses waiting for testing in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, double the usual number.

She said recruiting is the biggest challenge: Currently, between one in seven and one in 10 positions are vacant.

The agency is considering launching a national apprenticeship scheme and lowering the skills standards needed to enter trades to boost numbers.

“This can slowly deteriorate into a very uncomfortable and unhelpful situation,” Miles said.

“If there aren’t enough people with the right skills to do local government inspections, then there’s no line of defense.”

The agency’s study found that facilities that received a rating of three out of five had a higher risk of infection with E. coli, Salmonella, norovirus and Listeria than those that received a rating of five out of five.

Miles added that the impact of a major outbreak could be devastating.

“It’s not worth the pain and tragedy of people getting sick, and it’s not worth damaging our credibility as a food nation,” she said.

A spokesman for Food Standards Scotland said staff numbers were extremely low because there were “too few sufficiently qualified staff to fill existing posts”.

He added that staffing shortages in Scottish local authorities are currently estimated to be around 47% of required staff.

Phoebe Clay is director of Unchecked UK, a group of organisations campaigning for better consumer regulation.

She called on the new Labour government to provide more funding to local authorities.

“A relatively small investment could make the difference between an inspection every two years and once every six months,” she said.

A spokesman for the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which oversees local authority work in England, said: “We are going to rebuild local government by getting the basics right.”

“We will do this by providing greater stability to local governments through multi-year funding settlements, ending competitive bidding for funding and reforming the local audit system.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said Brexit and the introduction of new export procedures had increased the workload for local authority food hygiene teams in Scotland.

“We recognise the significant challenges facing local authorities in continuing to deliver sustainable environmental health services in communities across Scotland.”

The Shared Data Unit provides data journalism to news organisations across the media industry as part of a partnership between the BBC and the News Media Association.

Learn more about our local news partnership here.