Request
1. Staffing:
(a) Number of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff (including, if possible, agency or contractor staff working in equivalent roles) in your environmental health dept, unit or team in 2019/20 and 2025/26.
(b) Of the total FTE in your environmental health team, please indicate, for both 2019/20 and 2025/26, the approximate FTE allocated to the following functions:
- Food hygiene/food standards inspections and enforcement
- Pest control – this is done by another department.
- Infectious disease control (including outbreak investigation, liaison with health protection bodies, etc.)
Note: I appreciate that some staff work across multiple areas. Where possible please apportion their FTE by time spent (e.g. a 1.0 FTE officer spending half their time on food safety and half on housing should be counted as 0.5 in each category). If exact data is not held, please provide the best available estimate used for internal planning, monitoring or statutory reporting - rather than create a new data set.
2. Businesses
(a) Number of food businesses (including restaurants and takeaways) registered in the local authority in 2019/20 and 2025/26
(b) Number of food businesses (including restaurants and takeaways) inspected in 2019/20 and 2025/26.
(c) Number of registered food businesses that are eligible for inspection, but which have never been inspected.
(d) Number of food businesses (including restaurants and takeaways) that failed inspections in 2019/20 and 2025/26. – (to note we consider a inspection scoring 0-2 a failed inspection)
(e) Number of enforcement visits to food businesses in the local authority in 2019/20 and 2025/26. (To note we consider follow up visits from the original inspection to be an enforcement visit)
(f) Number of incidents involving pests (vermin, insects etc) at food businesses in; 2019/20 and 2025/26.
(g) Number of closures of food businesses in 2019/20 and 2025/26
(h) Number of prosecutions of food businesses in 2019/20 and 2025/26.
Response
1. (a) As follows:
2019/20: 26.51 FTE
2025/26: 23.44 FTE
(b) As follows:
|
|
2019/20
|
2025/26
|
|
Food Hygiene
|
3.05 FTE
|
3.15 FTE
|
|
Infectious Disease
|
0.2 FTE
|
0.2 FTE
|
Please note that Dover District Council do not undertake food standards work (this is undertaken by Kent County Council) and treatment for pest control is provided by a contractor.
2. The Council does not hold this data for 2019/20 as this is outside our retention period. The data for 2025/26 is as follows:
(a) 1213
(b) 530
(c) 50*
(d) 35
(e) 67
(f) The Council does not hold this information
(g) 6
(h) 1
*This figure represents the number of premises that had not yet been inspected as of 31 March 2026. This was due to the premises having recently registered, having registered but not yet commenced trading or a premises being temporarily closed due to seasonal operation.