MORE resources need to be put into Cer­edigion County Council’s food hygiene and standards service to ensure premises inspections are carried out within time limits, councillors have warned.

A Food Standards Agency Wales audit of the council’s food law enforcement services was positive about the authority’s work.

But it did warn that the council needs to do more to ensure that premises inspections and food sampling is carried out in compliance with regulations after identifying checks as being the areas that need to be addressed.

One of the concerns raised as part of the issue over the frequency of inspections and sampling was that the department is currently under-resourced.

Councillors on the authority’s Healthier Communities Scrutiny Committee urged Cabinet members to consider allocating greater funding to the department as part of the budget process for 2017/18.

A report from the scrutiny committee to the authority’s audit committee said the FSA report had been mostly positive.

However, the report had raised some issues around some areas such as food hygiene and food standards intervention frequency, intervention reports and food hygiene sampling.

Committee members said those issues could be affected by the resources available to the department.

See this week’s south editions for the full story, in shops and online now