Pub FoodHealth and Safety 40 Monday 12/07/10 thePublican
resources that pubs can use on its website. A case study of how to risk assess food preparation in a small business is available on its website here:
http://tiny.cc/hncpi A risk assessment for a small pub kitchen shouldn’t take too long to perform, perhaps an afternoon, says Simon Brownlee, policy advisor at HSE. “It’s just a case of looking at
not talking about trivial incidents,” he adds.
Brownlee strongly recommends getting staff involved in putting the risk assessment together. They are the ones who will have to conform to the solutions put forward by the risk assessment and they are the ones who know what hazards there may be. “They can also tell you if the con-
‘By far the greatest number of accidents occurring in kitchens are due to slips and trips’
your premises and practices and pro- cedures and deciding if there is any- thing there that could cause harm to people – we are
trols will work or not,” he says. “There’s no point deciding you are going to do something a certain way when no-one will do it that way because it’s far too complicated.” But above all, Brownlee advises that the risk assessment should be a “living document” – something that staff can refer to and not something that gathers dust on a shelf somewhere. If you are a bigger
company you might go to a stock audit company spe- cialising in the leisure and hospitality sector, such as Venners, to guide you. This type of company also helps pubs that have got into difficulties around health and safety get back on track. Within the risk assess- ment, a big area of concern for any catering company is what are termed ‘slips and trips’. By far the greatest number of accidents occurring in kitchens are due to slips and trips. You need to make sure you have got the appropriate flooring and main- tain it properly. Meller says: “There are a whole host of issues to look at. You’ve got hot machinery and hot oils – there’s a whole host of
potential risk areas that you need to make sure you have taken steps to mitigate.” The HSE reports that
across the hospi- tality sector 1,863 people were injured during an acci- dent involving an employee slipping or
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How they do it at Town & City Pub Company
Town & City has well established health and safety procedures in place but even then these are “evolving” says Rob Hawkesworth (pictured), head of risk management. Risk assessment is simply a case of working out what risks are involved in carrying out certain tasks and then taking steps to minimise them. In the case of a low-risk task like doing the vacuuming it might be a case of making staff aware that trailing wires represent a trip risk. But those working in the kitchen will need training on using and storing knives, for example. “It’s more about protection for our people, although it does protect the business legally as well,” says Hawkesworth. Every activity will be in this risk assessment folder and the duty manager will go through it and review it. If new staff come on board they may need training, or if the pub changes its layout or procedures the risk assessment may need to change too. The risk assessment manual will include things such as manual handling, use of stepladders, slips and trips, knives, clearing away broken glass, cleaning the beer lines, cleaning up spillages during trading hours – even vacuuming. “In a pub, where you can spill food and drink really easily, we have a strict policy on that,” says Hawkesworth. “Staff need to know how to clean it up properly and they should know to do it quickly and how it should be done. Most of the stuff in the kitchen is slippery – oil and vegetables, for example.” But it’s important to tailor your approach. When someone new starts at a
Town & City pub they undergo on-site and online food hygiene training. If you are running a larger operation where roles are divided, staff may not need such in-depth training. But if you’ve got someone who is going to be carrying out multiple roles, they will need to be trained to be able to carry out all of them safely.
The pub company also has its own food safety policy, which outlines aspects including shelf life and food preparation, and a health and Safety policy dossier. There is also a daily front-of-house diary, which covers some health and safety issues such as fire precautions and logging of accidents. But the pièce de résistance is the kitchen diary. The A4-sized diary has two pages per day with lists of things to check, including fridge and freezer temperatures, hot water supply for hand-washing, temperature of hot food, use-by dates and making sure food isn’t left out to cool for too long. It also has an aide memoire of cleaning tasks, including emptying and cleaning of bins, sanitising of surfaces including the fridge and freezers and checking that overhead grills and filters have been cleaned. The kitchen diary is signed off at the end of each day by the duty chef or kitchen manager to say that all the checks have been carried out. This is then signed off by the duty manager. The diary helps satisfy due diligence and is also a good way for the pub to ensure that its policies are carried out in practice.
Monthly checks are carried out by area managers, who look at areas including making sure health and safety and fire safety checks have been carried out, a full fire evacuation drill has been practised in the past six months, the kitchen diary is up to date and the risk assessments are being adhered to.
tripping in 2006/7. Some of these inci- dents are really horrific, such as the case when a worker slipped on a wet floor and while falling pulled over a deep fat fryer, which emptied the con- tents all over him. This has prompted the department to launch its ‘stop slips in kitchens campaign’. The HSE has produced a good practice guide on how to reduce slips and trips with a combination of the correct flooring and cleaning, which is available at
http://tiny.cc/nwkvd
Safety vinyl flooring, for example, has a low slip risk but needs to be cleaned properly with the correct cleaners, otherwise it can lose its anti-slip properties.
Standard vinyl or lino, on the other hand, has a high slip risk and cleaning alone will not be enough to offset the risk of slips.
Employees may need to wear slip-resistant shoes and regularly clean their soles, and a stricter cleaning regime may need to be implemented.
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