The main roles of an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) or food safety officer include:
- Providing food safety advice. They may provide this advice during your food hygiene inspection, so listen carefully.
- Inspecting food premises to make sure businesses are complying with food safety laws and serving safe food.
- Taking action where they find a business is not complying with food safety laws. This could be giving verbal advice or providing a report or letter stating what needs to be done and by when or serving legal notices.
- Investigating complaints such as complaints from members of the public in relation to food and food premises.
- Investigating cases and outbreaks of food poisoning.
The main powers of an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) or food safety officer include:
- Entering and inspecting food premises at any reasonable time. That’s normally the hours a business is open or preparing food.
- Seizing suspect food and having it destroyed.
- Serving legal notices.
- Interviewing/ questioning team members or Food business Operators.
- Taking samples of food for examination or analysis.
- Taking photographs.
- Viewing documentation and records, including electronic records.
- Recommending prosecution of a Food business Operator in serious cases.
Legal notices
The 3 main legal notices are:
1. Hygiene Improvement Notice. This type of notice is served for less serious matters. For example; to require the repair of cracked floor tiles or the implementation of a HACCP system. A hygiene improvement notice will state what’s wrong, why, what needs to be done to put things right and timescales to do so. It cannot allow less than 14 days to put things right.
2. Hygiene Emergency Prohibition Notice. As the name suggests, this is serious. This type of notice is served when there’s a real and imminent risk of ‘injury to health’. For example; a severe pest infestation or no water or sewage inside of a food premises. This notice will stop the use of an entire premises, part of the premises or a specific activity or piece of equipment. When someone says “the EHO will close you down”, this is the notice they’re referring to. Once issued, the officer must apply to the courts within 3 days to get the notice converted to an order. The order can only be lifted once the local authority issues a certificate saying there is no longer a risk to the health of the public. In this type of situation, a business may be able to voluntarily close to put things right.
3. Prohibition order. This is an order granted by the court, rather than a notice. This is where a person can be banned from running a food business. This can happen if a Food business Operator has been found guilty in court of food safety offences. The officer can recommend to the court that a Prohibition order is granted. It’s the court that issues the order.
Officers in Scotland can serve a Remedial Action Notice (RAN) in all types of food premises. This is where there’s ongoing non-compliance. The RAN will stop use of a premises, part of a premises, a piece of equipment or process until compliance is achieved.
Ignoring a legal notice can result in prosecution, large fines and even imprisonment. So, if you receive a notice make sure you take it seriously.
Prosecution can result in fines of an unlimited amount and up to 6 months in prison if found guilty in the Magistrates court or up to 2 years imprisonment if found guilty in the Crown court or the Sheriff Court System in Scotland.