The Food Standards Agency has recognised that the demands of the new food legislation, due to take effect in January 2006, will require additional resourcing and is already beginning to provide special grants to help Local Authorities implement the resulting ‘Safer Food Better Business’ initiative. Grants worth £5.5million have already been announced with a further £4.5million still to be allocated. Even so, Authorities face the dilemma of how to actually deliver the initiative when they already have overstretched environmental health departments. The departments may get the money, but existing staff will simply not have enough time to dedicate to the project.

RSA Environmental Health Ltd has specially trained staff in ‘Safer Food, Better Business’. They undertook the PgCert ‘HACCP for Catering’ at the University of Salford, which is also where the team that created the ‘Safer Food, Better Business’ pack for the FSA are based.

RSA can provide a valuable service to Local Authorities looking for a cost-effective and timely way to manage the ‘Safer Food, Better Business’ initiative. We can offer two options to ease the whole implementation process, without creating a drain on precious staff time and resources. These are:

Provide manpower

RSA's consultants will deliver the ‘Safer Food, Better Business’ initiative to the relevant food premises within an Authority's district. These troubleshooters will work on short-term contracts and act as Local Authority representatives holding workshops and delivering mentoring sessions to food businesses.

This means that Local Authorities have the option of tapping into RSA’s skilled manpower, so that they avoid the hassle of recruitment and all of the on-costs that go with it. They will be able to effectively outsource the delivery of SFBB, but still maintain overall management to whatever degree they feel comfortable with. For those Authorities that prefer to use their existing staff for the project, they know that cost-effective training is available to give officers the right skill-set to do the job successfully.