Premises must be kept clean and maintained in good repair and condition.

Surfaces must be kept in a sound condition and must be easy to clean.

Vehicles and containers

All articles, fittings and equipment that come into contact with food must be kept clean. Equipment should be constructed, maintained and made of such materials as to minimise any risk of food contamination.

Every person working in a food handling area shall maintain a high degree of personal cleanliness. This is intended to include good personal hygiene practices. These may be summarised as follows:

• wash and dry hands, especially before and after handling food and using the toilet

• report any illness

• do not work if you are suffering from diarrhoea and/or vomiting

• do not handle food if suffering from infected lesions on skin, which cannot be totally covered during food handling

• cover cuts and abrasions with a waterproof, preferably coloured, dressing

• do not spit in food handling areas

• do not smoke in food handling areas

• do not eat or chew gum in food handling areas. (Tasting of dishes during preparation is acceptable provided that it is done without contaminating food. A clean utensil should be used by each taster)

• do not wear jewellery, false nails, nail varnish or excessive perfume

• wear clean, protective clothing and adequate head covering.

All persons working in food handling areas must wear suitable, clean clothing. The standard of clothing would depend on the duties being carried out. For example, someone handling open food should wear a clean coat, tunic or similar, together with head covering, whilst a store man would require a coat or similar over-garment. Infected food handlers. No person known or suspected to be suffering from a disease likely to be transmitted through food, or suffering from infected wounds, skin infections or diarrhoea, may be permitted to work in any food handling area in any capacity where they may contaminate food with pathogenic micro-organisms.

Raw materials and ingredients must not be accepted if it is known, or might reasonably be expected, that they are so contaminated with parasites, pathogenic micro-organisms, or toxic, decomposed or foreign substances, that after normal sorting, preparation or processing, they would still be unfit for human consumption.  All such products stored in premises must be kept in appropriate conditions designed to prevent harmful deterioration and to protect them from contamination. Protection from contamination. All food which is handled, stored, packaged, displayed and transported must be protected against contamination likely to render the food unfit for human consumption, injurious to health or contaminated in such a way as would be unreasonable to expect it to be consumed.

Hazardous and/or inedible substances. These will include animal feedstuffs, food that has spoiled or is past its "use by" date and substances such as cleaning materials. Any such substances must be adequately labelled and stored in separate and secure containers.