So, three weeks in now on the burger joint, and all going very well. At the end of last week, the EvH officer turned up to do his inspection. On recording things, over the years that we had the two cafes, we have always checked the fridge and freezer temps every day, and recorded them in a diary, as our original EvH officer told us to. We also had cleaning schedule books, which were filled in and signed by the employees responsible. All seems pretty reasonable to me. However, the guy that came this time (same local authority, same branch office, but a guy we had not had before) tells us that there is no need to record the actual temperatures, just the fact that that they have been checked and found to be ok. The wife politely told him that she did not think that was adequate proof in the event of the shit hitting the fan for any reason, and that she would continue doing it as she had originally been instructed. He then started to have a bit of a cry about the counter frame being wood. Again, the wife jumped up and told him that she knew exactly what he was going to say, and that if he looked a bit closer, he would see that every last square inch of it, had been treated to two coats of a kitchen specced varnish, so he was ok with that.
Then came his big one. When the landlords did the conversion, they fitted the new bog in the corner of the store-room out the back. It is a fully disabled specced toilet, complete with outward opening door, low-level handle, hand safety bars unlidded toilet seat and so on, as I understand is the requirement these days. Certainly, the landlords are a big London property company, and had their own team of builders that came in to do this work, so you would think that it would be right.
Anyways, the EvH guy says that because it is a food establishment, this arrangement is not acceptable because the toilet should have a 'lobby' leading into it, and a lid on the toilet. The wife pointed out that it would not then be a disabled accessible toilet, as was required by workplace legislation. His reply was that he didn't know anything about that (!) She also pointed out that its location was just a store-room, and that the nearest place that there was any food prep going on, was the other side of a fire door a whole room away ... "Ah yes", says he, "but there is a freezer in the store-room". "But it is only used to store goods sealed in the manufacturer's original packaging", says the wife. "Doesn't matter", says he. So the daughter tells him that she will just move the freezer into the main food area and avoid the issue altogether.
Apparently, that would be ok, but he still said that he really wanted another door in front of the main toilet door.
Since then, another friend who (thinks he) is up on all this legislation, says that as long as the toilet is against an outside wall, which it is, and has an automatic extractor fan venting to the outside, then that is a completely acceptable arrangement for food premises, without there being a need for any kind of 'lobby' to access the toilet from.
With the location of the emergency escape door in the rear wall, it would not be easy to add any kind of lobby in any case, so does anyone know a definitive answer to this or know a web location for any write-up on the relevant regs ? Or is it a case of interpretaion by individual LAs or their EvH officers ?
Any insights appreciated
Arfa