Council provides backing for Checkit management and monitoring system through primary authority partnership
Cambridge City Council has provided an option for other local authorities to pick up its approval of a cloud based food safety management system for schools, hospitals and restaurants to use to ensure they meet the relevant standards.
It has created a primary authority partnerhship with the system developer Checkit, under which it indicates its support for the system to other regulatory authorities. If counterparts from other councils, which are responsible for compliance with food safety standards, have any issues with the system they can approach Cambridge for clarification.
The system is built upon the Food Standards Agency's Safer Food Better Business guidance, and involves a series of interactive digital checklists and automated cloud monitoring to support compliance.
It comprises four elements. The Memo is a handheld unit that displays scheduled tasks to staff, guiding them to ensure they comply with business processes and procedures, then automatically records and date stamps their actions.
Second is a collection of hand-held probes for checking temperatures, and third the wireless sensors that can automatically monitor temperatures, humidity and door status.
All of the data is fed to the cloud based control centre software that enables managers to see which food safety tasks have been completed, and provides an audit trail.
Digital record
Frank Harrison, manager of the commercial team at Cambridge, said the system provides a complete digital record and can help institutions and businesses using it to move away from paper based records.
“This Primary Authority Partnership shows that Cambridge City Council is committed to working with local business, and recognises the national benefit that good partnership working can achieve.,” said Peter Roberts, executive councillor for environment and waste at Cambridge.
“This cloud based food safety management system is the natural progression of the paper version most widely used, and will help advance food safety to a higher level,” he added.
Image by Javier Leiva, CC BY 2.0 through Wikimedia Commons
