We think it’s in everyone’s best interests to ensure food safety is maintained and improved within businesses so that your customers can feel assured that the food they eat is safe.

Who better to ask for advice on compliance?

We are the people who carry out enforcement visits on a daily basis and ensure that people are complying correctly with legislation. Therefore we are in a great position to now offer a low cost bespoke mentoring service for businesses who request our help in order to raise standards.

We understand that some businesses may find food safety legislation complex and find it difficult to apply it to their own businesses and therefore we offer this mentoring service so that we can help you to do this. 

This service is for businesses in Cambridge. If you have a business outside the city, we can consider helping you on the basis of reimbursement of our travel expenses.

New business advice prior to opening

When opening a new food business it can seem complicated in relation to what may be required on your first food hygiene inspection and how you even advise the local authority that you wish to trade as a food business.

We can offer new businesses advice, prior to opening, such as:

• The need to register the food business with us and how this should be done;
• Guidance on layout and structural requirements at the premises;
• The level of food hygiene training that staff should have;
• The need for a documented food safety management system.

Why choose us?

Obviously the advice, if followed, should result in a subsequent straightforward inspection visit as you will be aware of the rules and regulations with which you need to comply and therefore an acceptable food hygiene rating score should be achieved.

Price

A visit for this purpose will be charged at an hourly rate of £90 – a minimum half-hour rate applies. The time required for the visit will depend on the depth at which you would like our assistance.

For example: Simply assessing and commenting on prepared plans that you may have regarding the layout of a small premises, having discussed the intentions for the business, should not be more than an hour.

Helping you to complete a documented food safety management system by carrying out Coaching in the Safer Food Better Business pack, or for us to provide more detailed advice, will take longer.

Following the visit we will confirm in writing what has been discussed so that you can be sure you have something to work with to ensure that the required standards are met.

Book our service

Contact us to book a convenient time and date, or to discuss the provision of this service. Ask to speak to a member of our Commercial Food team or email env.health@cambridge.gov.uk with your request, business name and contact details.

Mentoring advice for businesses wishing to improve their Food Hygiene Rating

How we can help

We can help all businesses that may have had a poor food hygiene rating and wish to raise this by fully understanding how the food legislation applies to their business and we will customise our service to your needs.

We can also help good business who might just need a little extra help to gain a food hygiene rating of 5 by discussing issues raised on their food hygiene inspections and ensuring improvements are made.

The visit can also involve any staff that you may have to ensure that they are also aware of their responsibilities and that procedures that you have put in place, are being followed by the staff in the business.

After the visit

We can show you how to request a re-score revisit so that you may be able to demonstrate that what has been discussed, has been put into practice so that by raising your standards, you should achieve a higher food rating.

The cost

In general we feel that a mentoring visit will last between 2-4 hours at a cost of £87.50 per hour (a minimum 1/2 hour rate applies).

As we are a public service we can't make a profit and that's how the costs are kept so low.