Is Falkirk one of the UK's worst area's for bad food hygiene?

Falkirk has made it onto the list of the UK's top ten worst council areas for food hygiene.

The ten best and worst council areas for food hygiene in the UK have been revealed by consumer’s association Which? and Falkirk is the sixth worst area, just behind Birmingham, Camden and Croydon, but worse than both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

To carry out the study, Which? looked at data for 390 local authorities, including information from the Local Authority Monitoring System (LAEMS), collected by the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

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However, a defiant Falkirk Council has found the figures hard to swallow and states it does not recognise the statistics quoted in the Which? as being accurate or reflecting the real picture in the Falkirk area.

A Falkirk Council spokesperson said: “Food Standards Scotland does not rank Scottish local authorities, as it recognises that designing food hygiene comparison methods can be misleading.

“The pass rate for Falkirk Council food premises is 95 per cent in April 2018. Food Standards Scotland is in the process of developing a new database to collect all Scottish local authority food enforcement activities in real time which will provide a more accurate profile of the official food controls being carried out across Scotland.”

The council also stated the reference performance measure used in the Which? report is “compliance”, which is the responsibility of the Food Business Operator.

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Falkirk Council states it is only responsible for the number of premises which have opened but not yet been visited and rated for risk and, the number of interventions – prevention or elimination of food safety risks – completed.

A spokesperson said: “For both of these responsibilities Falkirk Council is better than the Scottish average.”

Visit www.falkirk.gov.uk/services/environment/food-hygiene for more information.