Back last February we wrote about the food hygiene ratings for restaurants, cafes etc in our district. At that time there was only one premises in our district with a food hygiene rating of zero out of five.
But if you look now at the Food Standards Agency website you will see there are now eleven premises in Rochford district with a zero rating – meaning ‘urgent improvement necessary’. There are another eighteen with a one rating – meaning “major improvement necessary”.
By comparison, there are only four zero rated premises in Southend.
There are only three in Basildon.
There are four in Castle Point.
So Rochford has as many places with zero hygiene ratings as Southend, Basildon and Castle Point put together! Is that because hygiene levels are really lower at these places, or are the inspections here tougher?
But pages 13-47 are all 5 stars – good news?
One of the things that might be relevant is that a lot of rules were changed recently as self regulation was introduced. the Food Safety Management Regulations require lots of paperwork to be regularly maintained and some of the new businesses in Rochford District, often staffed by foreign workers, are not doing the paperwork and therefore getting the low rating (I don’t know if same applies to other areas). Some of our best restaurants, with great tripadvisor write ups, have a low rating. This isn’t just a problem for the food establishments, but probably for the regulators and inspectors. It also poses a big dilemma for ordinary people eating out.
Well then Steve, the food establishments shouldn’t be staffed by foreign workers as they are clearly not capable of doing the job (yes the job includes the paperwork!) I am continually irritated by migrate workers being ‘shipped in’ by the large chains. Ask and Prezzo are guilty of this in Rayleigh. Wouldn’t it be nice to go in and be served by someone local?