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Food Safety

The food hygiene regulations make it an offence for anyone to sell or process food for sale which is harmful to health. They also place obligations on persons selling food and businesses to ensure that the production and processing of food is carried out in a hygienic manner and registered with the relevant Local Authority.

An estimated five million people suffer from food poisoning in England and Wales each year. Running a food business means that you have a particular responsibility in protecting the health of your customers.

Food Hygiene Rating Scheme

There are over 2200 food businesses supplying food to you in Dudley Borough. The Council's dedicated team of Environmental Health Officers help to ensure that all food is safe to eat. Most of the work involves inspecting the food businesses, dealing with any complaints and investigating outbreaks of food-borne illnesses and poisoning, though we also sample food and offer advice and information.

All food businesses in Dudley are given a hygiene rating after each routine inspection and the results are published on our food hygiene rating scheme pages.


Complaints about Food or Premises

If you purchase food from a shop or had a meal at a restaurant or café and found it contained something that should not be there, for example a hair or piece of plastic, or are ill after eating there, this can be classed as a food complaint which we investigate. Please contact us if you need more advice on what to do.

Enforcement

All enforcement action is in accordance with goverment principles (see Hampton principles). Please see our enforcement pages for more information.

Some offences may not come to our attention for some time and could have been committed many months ago. A public register of prosecutions is maintained detailing details of prosecutions and formal cautions issued in the last three years, in accordance with the Environment and Safety Information Act 1988. Please bear in mind that the business may now be trading legitimately, presenting no risk to consumers. If you are in any doubt, please contact us.

Dudley food for health logo

Food Poisoning

Food poisoning and food-borne illness are mainly caught from contaminated food caused by poor hygiene. The common causes of food poisoning are:

  • under cooked food
  • inadequate temperature control of food
  • food contaminated by raw meat or poultry
  • food contaminated by food handlers with unclean hands
  • food contaminated by unclean equipment

 

If you're ill after eating at a restaurant please make a food complaint to us or have a look at our food poisoning pages for more information.

Food Hygiene Inspections

The majority of our routine food hygiene inspections to premises are carried out without prior notification and are priority programmed according to the degree of risk. We may also make unplanned inspections when the need arises too.

After every routine inspection, the premises is given a new risk rating and a food hygiene rating scheme (also known as the 'score on the doors') is generated from this assessment. The results of the food hygiene rating scheme is published on this website. A premises with a higher 'score' will be visited more frequently and may be subject to enforcement action in accordance with our enforcement policy. Good premises who also serve healthy food may also apply for and gain one of our Food for Health Awards. To request an inspection, please contact us.

Registration of a Food Business Establishment

All food business that serve food to the public, whether for profit or not, need to register with the Council. In addition, some manufacturing food business also need to get their business approved by the Council.