Just a reminder to all BFFF members, that along with our other partnerships, BFFF has developed a series of co-ordinated Primary Authority partnerships with a number of different regulatory authorities. These include Cambridgeshire County Council Trading Standards from 2014, South Cambridgeshire District Council Environmental Health from 2015, Wakefield Council Environmental Health from 2016 and Essex Fire & Rescue Services from 2020 to create a dedicated legal resource base to meet the needs of our members.

Primary Authority is a means for businesses to receive assured and tailored advice on meeting environmental health, trading standards, health and safety or fire safety regulations through a single point of contact. This enables all businesses in the coordinated partnership to invest with confidence in products, practices, and procedures, knowing that the resources they devote to compliance are well spent.

Primary Authority is based on legal partnerships between businesses and individual local authorities.

Advice is provided to you via BFFF which has been tailored to our members general needs. This advice can be found on our website here.

Primary authorities provide advice to businesses that other local regulators must respect on compliance with the regulations. They can also produce an inspection plan for a business or the members of a trade association to improve the effectiveness of visits by local regulators and underpin better sharing of information.

The benefits to the business are:

• access to relevant, authoritative tailored advice
• gain recognition of robust compliance arrangements
• draw on an established and effective means of meeting business regulations
• be more confident they are protecting yourselves and your customers

Its costs nothing to sign up through the coordinated partnership

If you have any questions, please contact Holly (hollyjones@bfff.co.uk)

More information can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-regulation-primary-authority

Primary Authority: a guide for businesses with a co-ordinated primary authority

By: Juliet King MSc, FCIEH, FRSPH – Environment Health Practitioner, Food & H&S and Primary Authority Officer, Commercial Team, Shared Waste and Environment