Who checks that restaurants prepare food safely, take action against off-licences selling alcohol to children and act against shops using dodgy scales to con customers?  That would be the Council’s Environmental Health and Trading Standards section, who presented their annual report to our Cheadle Area Committee on Tuesday.

You can read the report in full on pages 64 to 75 of the agenda (PDF, 2MB).

Some of the work the teams undertake include;

• Investigating reports of food poisoning and infectious diseases
• Delivering a wide range of CIEH (Chartered Institute of Environmental Health) approved training courses in food and health & safety
• Provision of a Pest control service
• Offering a Graffiti removal service
• Administering fixed penalty notices from issue up to and including court action
• Monitoring farms and small holdings to ensure they keep records of the transfer of animals and check that animals are transported humanely
• Investigating and advising on problems with drainage
• Ensuring public safety by licensing and carrying out checks on private hire vehicles, taxis and their drivers
• Licensing all premises requiring a licence to operate, such as those selling alcohol, gambling and lotteries
• Licensing pet shops, boarding kennels, riding schools, dog breeders and owners of dangerous wild animals
• Providing advice and information on fair trading, consumer rights and trading standards legislation to the public and business
• Enforcing the law on counterfeiting, trade marks and copyright
• Enforcing the law on weights and measures, pricing, overloaded vehicles and hallmarking
• Investigating complaints about dangerous products and conduct regular inspections and surveys
•  Investigating complaints about the sale of clocked or unroadworthy vehicles

Amongst many other activites, the environmental health and trading standards people gave awards like the Curry Chef  Competition and the Fair Play Charter (the second to the retail motor trade).

They also tackle pest control, and have seen reports of rats drop  significantly in the last two years.  They issued 14 Fixed Penalty Notices to dog owners who failed to remove their pets’ faece, and provide free dog bags to all Stockport residents via libraries and information centres.

They’ve been looking at the wall around the old cemetary in Gatley, and provided burial space for Muslim burials at Mill Lane Cemetary in Cheadle.

They deal with noisy pubs (something they suggest may have been made worse by the smoking ban – more people congregate outside our pubs now).

They’ve promoted and run Pub Watch, starting in Four Heatons and learning the lessons for the more recent schemes in Gatley, Edgeley, Bramhall and Cheadle.

The service has developed a rapid response approach to rogue traders, and have been pro-active in  holding “rogue trader days” in conjunction with police.

On alcohol sales to children, a survey suggests that the number of young people saying they’re able to purchase alcohol has fallen 23% in the last two years.  The team send out young people to make test purchases: vendors should refuse to sell them alcohol.  In Cheadle, two warnings were given to businesses.

There’s lots more in the report, so why not take a look.

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