What is food hygiene?
Food hygiene requirements govern cleaning in premises where food is handled. Cleaning contractors working in them form part of the client's food safety arrangements.
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<a href="https://cleanoptix.co.uk/glossary/food-hygiene">What is food hygiene?</a> — diagram by
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</figure>A cleaning contractor's records can end up being examined by an environmental health officer, which is a different audience from a client's facilities manager and a different standard of record.
Staff working in food premises may need food hygiene training even though they do not handle food, because what they do affects whether the premises are safe.
Pest control, waste handling and drainage all interact with cleaning here, and gaps between contracts are where problems appear.
In practice
A cleaning contractor taking on a staff canteen.
The team is experienced in offices and is now working in an area subject to food safety requirements, with its own separation, its own equipment and its own records.
Cleaning in a food environment is a different discipline rather than the same discipline in a different room, and an operative moved across without training is working to habits formed somewhere the rules were looser.
The inspection that finds it will be the local authority's rather than the client's.
What goes wrong in practice
- Cleaning records kept to a standard that would not satisfy an inspection.
- Staff untrained in food hygiene despite working in food areas.
- Responsibility for waste and pest issues undefined between contractor and client.