Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support his Department provides to help small and micro food businesses to (a) understand and (b) comply with food hygiene certification requirements.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has developed and published many materials on the FSA website to support businesses to meet the requirements set out in food hygiene legislation. The website is available at the following link:

http://www.food.gov.uk/

We know that small and micro businesses can face additional challenges when trying to access and understand legal requirements, so there are several free tools which have been designed to guide small and micro businesses including Safer Food Better Business (SFBB), as well as Safe Catering Guidance for Northern Ireland.

The practical and easy-to-use packs will help small businesses to:

- comply with food hygiene regulations;

- show what they need do to make and store food safely including how to clean effectively;

- train staff and support them to use good hygiene practices;

- protect business's reputation; and

- improve food hygiene rating scores.

There are also additional supplementary packs for SFBB available to support sectors such as childminders, residential care homes, retailers, and businesses serving Indian and Chinese cuisines.

In addition, the FSA website has a dedicated Business Guidance section which provides information such as how to start a food business safely, starting a food business from home and selling food for delivery. It hosts free online food safety courses on allergen management and root cause analysis.

The FSA regularly runs campaigns across various social media platforms to inform food businesses of the available materials to support their compliance with hygiene requirements.