Food safety inspections
The maintenance of safe foodstuffs to the consumer from the many hundreds of retail, catering and manufacturing outlets within the borough is a vital ingredient.
The authority holds a register of all food traders and each one is individually inspected without prior warning, to ensure that the practices are hygienic and that adequate controls are in place to prevent contamination with either foreign bodies or harmful bacteria. These requirements cover all premises from home caterers to ice cream vans and food factories to workplace canteens and all retail outlets including pubs and clubs. Please see the appropriate page for further information on registration.
We have teamed up with the Food Standards Agency and every other local authority in Wales to be a part of the National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme.
The scheme, which is being rolled out across the UK, provides the people of Merthyr Tydfil with a better idea about hygiene standards and how local food businesses are rated.
Restaurants, takeaway cafes, sandwich shops, pubs, hotels, retail food outlets and any other business where you can eat or buy food, are given a rating.
Each business is scored from 0 to 5 (5 being the best) based on information collected during routine inspections by Environmental Health Officers. This information is then published on a national website, which customers can access (please click on the link to the right side of this page).
Businesses are also encouraged to display a sticker giving their rating, which provides ‘at-a-glance’ information to customers and helps people to make informed choices about where they buy and eat food.
We began rating businesses from 1st October 2010 and the scores are being published on the national food hygiene ratings website.
All existing businesses have been provided with advice about the scheme and a leaflet has been developed to provide advice for new businesses (please click on the document on the right side of the page).
Forms applicable to the scheme are provided below.
Our Food Safety Service Charter outlines the standards that we operate to and our Compliance and Enforcement Policy Policy shows how we carry out enforcement to improve food safety standards. The Service Plan for this year is also provided.