Food Safety

The Food Safety Service is involved in a range of activities to maintain and improve the hygiene standards at food premises and to help ensure that food fit for human consumption is prepared, stored and sold at local outlets.

The work includes:

• planned inspection of businesses
• re-visits
• investigation of food complaints
• investigation of cases and outbreaks of food poisoning
• giving timely advice.

Trading Standards

Colleagues working at Notts County Council Trading Standards have statutory powers to deal with complementary food issues including food labelling, weights and measures, durability, complaints relating to quality issues, the adulteration of foodstuffs and misleading claims. Trading Standards can be contacted directly by email at trading.standards@nottscc.gov.uk or by telephone on 01623 452005. Customer Services at Notts County Council can alternatively be contacted by telephone on 08449 80 80 80.

Food Complaints

Not all problems with food are the result of negligence - some are purely accidental. Responsible businesses are happy to be made aware of incidents, this in fact allows them to correct matters and prevent a recurrence.

Most complaints about foreign objects in food or mouldy produce are resolvable in this way. Alternatively for more serious cases you could make a complaint to the Food Service if you purchased the food in the Gedling area.

31 food complaints were brought to the Gedling Borough for investigation in 2010/11.

Have a Food Complaint?

If the food was purchased at a shop within the Borough of Gedling please contact us and arrangements can then be made for an officer to call on you at home or for you to come to our offices. If the food is perishable, refrigerate or freeze it until you can contact us. This is especially important if the complaint is of mouldy or decomposing food. Keep any packaging material and, if possible, the receipt for the purchase.

If the complaint is about some foreign object in the food try not to remove the object from the food and do not wash it clean.

If the food was purchased outside of Gedling you should complain directly to the Environmental Health Department for that district. We will be pleased to help put you in touch if required.

What we will do

We will approach the local food business on your behalf to find out where the fault occurred and whether it occurred as a result of a breach of the law.

In some case the opinion of a laboratory or public analyst will need to be sought. Some products derived from outside the United Kingdom will involve importers and possibly the Food Standards Agency. Investigation can therefore take some time to do and moreover while we will keep a complainant updated we cannot get involved in claiming compensation for you.

This is a matter between the company involved and the complainant and you should consult a solicitor for any legal advice.

What action will be taken?

Each complaint has to be dealt with in accordance with the requirements of the Food Safety Act. This means that investigations can often take a considerable amount of time to complete as contact may be made with vendors, manufacturers, importers, other local authorities, laboratories, solicitors etc.

Once all the evidence has been collected it will become clear whether it is necessary to advise, warn, caution, or prosecute over a food complaint. Should the Investigating Officer consider that prosecution is appropriate for the complaint you will be asked to provide a witness statement and may also be obliged to attend as a witness in court. The Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act will normally require us to disclose your details to the vendor or manufacturer as part of the legal action.

In majority of cases where a non-prosecution route is followed your name and address will, with your permission, be given to the vendor or manufacturer of the food to allow them to apologise directly to you over the complaint. At the end of the investigation we will contact you either by telephone or in writing to confirm the action taken.