Consultation on mobile traders food hygiene national standards - analysis of responses

Introduction and Background

The Scottish Government is committed to using all means possible to support economic and business growth. Making Scotland the best place to do business in Europe requires a regulatory landscape that protects our citizens, our heritage and our environment while concurrently providing a favourable business environment in which companies can grow and flourish.

Scotland's Economic Strategy continues to recognise the important role of better regulation in delivering a more successful and sustainable Scotland. The Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 created a more diverse toolkit to deliver better regulation and to further improve the way regulations are applied in Scotland. It will protect our people, our environment and help businesses to flourish and create jobs. Where regulation - or the way it is applied - does not meet the principles of better regulation it can hinder growth in business, employment and in the economy generally.

Business has provided examples of growth being constrained or unnecessary burdens being placed on them from inconsistent application of regulation. One complaint from a food business and its trade association highlighted the inconsistent application of standards in respect of street trading vehicles which operate in different local authority areas. Under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 for the purposes of a street trader's licence application a mobile food business required a certificate of compliance from the food authority in which the application is being made. As a result mobile food vans had to be inspected separately by each authority in which the business wished to operate in order to obtain a certificate. Upon closer investigation of this we found that this duplication of effort costs businesses and local authorities time and money.

Provisions within part 3 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 amend section 39(4) of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 to make it clear that the certificate to be produced for the purposes of a street trader's licence application for a mobile food business is to be from a food authority that has registered that establishment (rather than the food authority for the area in which the application for the licence is made). These changes mean that if a mobile food business wishes to trade in more than one local authority area in Scotland it can, for each street trader's licence application, produce a certificate from the same registering food authority.

National standards have been developed to provide consistency and transparency, efficiency and effectiveness in the implementation of regulations and inspections of mobile food business in respect of certificates of compliance for a street trader's licence application. Wider operational aspects were also included as part of this work, with the view of delivering consistency across mobile trading food hygiene more generally. This document provides an analysis to the consultation responses and the way forward.