FSA consultation

Food Standards Agency and Childminders - consultation

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has recently announced its plan to review current registration requirements for childminders in England. The FSA has launched its consultation documents, which can be viewed on the FSA website.
 

Current Policy

The current FSA view is that childminders, using their own premises to supply food to children on a regular basis, require registration with the local authority.
 
If childminders provide meals, snacks or drinks (apart from mains tap water) for children or babies and/or reheat food provided by a parent/carer, or cut it up, they must now comply with food safety and hygiene regulations.
 
Some childminders may, subject to the nature and scale of the business, be rated as higher risk by local authorities and require further inspections.
 
However, registration is not required if you only keep packed lunches in your fridge that are brought by parents or carers, provide plates and cutlery for the children to use to eat their own packed lunches and/or only provide food occasionally, e.g. a birthday cake for one of the children, or if a parent/carer has been delayed in picking up a child.
 

The consultation questions

The FSA have complied four key questions, seeking responses on how well current policy works:
1. Do you think the FSA’s current position with regard to childminders is proportionate and should remain as it is?
2. Do the current arrangements help ensure food safety is properly maintained?
3. Can you think of other ways in which burdens, administrative or otherwise, could be removed from childminders?
4. Are there any other ways of defining when childminders should not be required to register and/or comply with food hygiene legislation other than those we have set out in our consultation document?
 
As part of the consultation the FSA have developed four scenarios, outlining alternatives to current registration requirements.
 

How to respond

Inform the national NCMA response

NCMA will be issuing a national response to the consultation and would welcome your views to putting together a coherent response to the FSA’s questions and scenarios. You can contribute to this by taking this short online survey at http://www.surveytool.com/s/food.
 

Respond to the FSA directly

NCMA would also encourage members to respond directly to the FSA’s consultation. The closing date for responses is 6 February 2012.
 
If you do respond directly to the FSA, please let us know so we can keep track of NCMA members' views. We ask that you send any feedback/responses to info@ncma.org.uk.
 

 

Page last updated: 1/5/2012