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Rev Stephen Coles |
Vicar fights the good fight for festival food
Home-made fare saved from ‘crazy bureaucracy’
THEY’RE traditional favourites of a summer street festival, home-made jam tarts from the cake stall and a burger cooked in front of your eyes from a sizzling barbecue.
But this year organisers of outdoor events have been told to add a less welcome ingredient to their fetes, an Islington Council jobs-worth with a clipboard.
The Town Hall told the amateur chefs on the stalls at the Gillespie Festival – which has been enjoying home-made food stalls for 25 years – they need to fill out a complicated form explaining where their offerings have come from and how they were made.
The tight new regulations, sent to organisers of 23 events in Islington, have been christened “crazy health and safety bureaucracy” by a vicar, who took a stand and stopped the council’s clipboard crew in its tracks.
The Reverend Stephen Coles of St Thomas’ Church, Finsbury Park, said the form would prevent the church providing refreshments to the festival in September. He said it was geared towards commercial premises.
“There’s no way in which home-made food being brought fresh from home can pass the test, particularly if served not from commercial premises, like the vans that are out on match days, but from the ad hoc facilities available in a park on a once-a-year basis,” he said.
After negotiations, he said, council officers have backed down, agreeing the form is not suitable for one-off events. In return Rev Coles has agreed to ensure all hot food is kept at the required temperature or is eaten within two hours.
He said: “We now seem to have a working agreement. They were very apologetic. They’re revising the form because they are not suitable for these events. But there are still restrictions on what we can do.” He added: “We’ve been providing the main refreshment tent at Gillespie Festival for 25 years. Because members of the congregation are reasonably good cooks, they tend to come with a large saucepan of curry. We never know quite what they are going to bring. It’s a bit unpredictable.
“Gradually the hygiene restrictions have increased. Now we seem to be going into this phase where they are quoting all these kinds of things that would only be known to people with food businesses. This would have discourages people having these kind of community events.”
A council spokesman said: “Being able to buy tasty, home-made food is one of the nicest things about going to community and festival events, but we need to make sure that the food being served is safe.
“The council’s teams work together closely on this and are asking food businesses and individuals to complete a food hygiene form. It’s aimed as a checklist, so people can make sure they are following the right guidelines that will ensure the food they produce is safe. The form certainly isn’t intended to confuse or put a stop to food stalls at community events and our officers are happy to provide assistance and advice on this to anyone who needs it.” |
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