Consultation on mobile traders food hygiene national standards

IV – Mobile Traders Food Hygiene National Standards

7. The Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee ( SFELC) is a group that co-ordinates the food law enforcement and sampling and surveillance activities of Scottish local authorities and comprises representatives of central and local government, consumers and industry. It has developed these draft national standards for mobile traders food hygiene. We believed the range of representatives on SFELC, and their combined experience and interests, made them best placed to produce standards setting out the key requirements to ensure food safety compliance and provide transparency without placing unnecessary burdens on business.

8. The proposed national standards for mobile food business are contained in Annex A. These would apply to mobile food units where the operation of such requires a street trader’s licence under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. The standards also reflect the Scottish Government’s policy intent, seeking to ensure food safety compliance while providing proportionality and transparency without placing unnecessary burdens on business.

9. As currently drafted the standards incorporate both structural and operational requirements for mobile food units. This work provided the opportunity to take a holistic approach and seek to deliver, for the benefit of both regulators and the regulated, consistency across a range of aspects relating to the certificates and food hygiene for mobile food traders more generally. It is recognised that at the time of inspection for a certificate of compliance to support a street trader’s licence application it may not be possible to review or inspect operational procedures as these can only be assessed during normal trading.

10. These draft standards do not change the protection afforded to Scottish citizens. Rather, they seek to ensure that regulations are applied in a consistent and transparent way which assists mobile food business and do not impact on a food authority’s ability to inspect a food business trading within its jurisdiction.

11. Following this consultation, responses will be fully considered. Once agreed and finalised the standards will be used to support consistency across Scotland for both the structural and operational requirements for food hygiene for mobile traders.

12. A Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment will be produced. We will continue to engage with stakeholders on this and it will be published on the Scottish Government website in due course. To ensure the assessment is as robust as possible, the Scottish Government welcomes comments and information on the impact and costs of the proposals contained in this paper.