Food complaints

Food complaints are split in to two different types:

• food safety complaints
• food hygiene complaints 

Food hygiene complaints

The Food and Health & Safety Team can investigate all food hygiene matters. If you are concerned about cleanliness, food handling practices or pests, in any food business in the Rhondda Cynon Taf area then you can make a complaint.

If you would like to make a complaint or for more information please contact the Food and Health & Safety Team using the contact details below

Food safety complaints

The Food and Health & Safety Team deal with complaints about the quality and safety of foodstuffs, for example mouldy foods, foods containing foreign objects such as metal, glass or even insects.

You can contact the team if you have any complaints or concerns so that they can be investigated. Alternatively, you can return the item of food to the premises where it was purchased so that an investigation can be carried out “in-house”.

What food complaints will we investigate?

The team will investigate complaints about food purchased within the Rhondda Cynon Taf area.

The Food and Health & Safety Team cannot get a refund for your food and it is your decision as to whether to pursue the food complaint through the council or to return it to the place of purchase for the supplier to carry out an investigation. If you allow us to investigate your complaint we will not be able to return the food to you.

I have a food which I suspect to be unsafe, what do I do?

Contact the Food and Health & Safety Team, and then take note of the following to help you make sure your concerns can be fully investigated:

An officer may wish to take the food or foreign object away and submit it to a laboratory for analysis, so any suspect food which is not consumed or the foreign object itself should be retained and kept in a covered container, and placed in the refrigerator or freezer until collected. This will help delay any further deterioration of the food.

Retain any packaging you may have as this will provide important information such as use-by dates, batch codes, etc., which will be needed for the investigation.

Retain any foreign objects – they will be needed as evidence.

Always store any suspect foods in such a way so as not to contaminate other foods and never remove / separate the foreign object. Handle the food as little as possible and always wash your hands afterwards. Where possible, retain any receipts of purchase.

What will we do?

The level of investigation will depend upon the nature of the complaint, the risk posed to health, the professional judgment of the investigating officer and previous knowledge of similar complaints.

An investigation may range from visual examination and identification of a foreign object to in-depth analysis of the food.

Once an investigation has commenced, the officer dealing with your complaint will need to contact the premises where you bought your food (or their head office), or the manufacturer or importer of the food, and the local authority in which that manufacturer or importer is based.

At the end of the investigation, the enforcement action taken by the department will be determined by the nature of the complaint, complaint history of the business concerned and the food safety controls they have in place.

In many cases the action that is taken is informal; however should formal action be taken you will be required to provide a written statement.

The investigation itself can take a long time due to the delays caused by collating reports from companies, local authorities and laboratories; however you will be kept informed of progress during the course of the investigation.

The primary purpose of investigating food complaints is to safeguard public health.

If you would like to make a complaint or for more information on any of the above area's please contact us at: