Food Complaints - Environmental Health

How to make a complaint about food in Eastbourne - advice on the types of complaint that the council's Environmental Health service can deal with.

Foreign objects in food are a common complaint, however not all pose a health risk.

What to Do Before You Contact Us

Before contacting Environmental Health, please see Advice about Common Food Complaints, covering what you should do about problems with tinned foods, fish, vegetables and fruit, chocolate and confectionery, bakery goods, dried foods and meat.

This advice can also be downloaded as a leaflet in PDF format below.

When Should You Complain to Environmental Health?

The council's Environmental Health service will deal with food complaints that pose a public health risk. The Environmental Health service does not get involved in any compensation claims.

Compensation claims are a civil matter that you must take up with the manufacturer and, if necessary, the courts.

Environmental Health will deal with:

• Food that is not safe to eat or actually makes you ill

• Food that is so contaminated that it could not reasonably be eaten, for example a mouldy pie

• Food that contains a foreign object, for example glass in a loaf of bread

What Action Can We Take?

In order for the Environmental Health Service to take formal action there will have to be:

• A public health risk

• A good chain of evidence - details of where the food was bought, any relevant packaging

• Evidence that the company concerned has not taken all reasonable steps to prevent the problem

Any formal action must also comply with the Council’s Enforcement Policy.

What We Need You To Do

If you would like us to investigate a complaint about food you have bought in Eastbourne, please ensure you try to keep any packaging associated with the food and, if it is a highly perishable product store it in the freezer until you can bring it in to our offices.

You will need to bring the item to Environmental Health's offices, at the council's Customer Contact Centre, 1 Grove Road, Eastbourne.

Environmental Health also deals with complaints about catering premises - for more information go to Complaints about Food Premises - see Related Pages.

Other types of food complaints are dealt with by:

• Trading Standards (East Sussex County Council)
• The Shop, Manufacturer or Supplier